PS 
 
 AMONG THE HILLS 
 
f ( 
 
 
 l^aiBRARY OF Congress 
 
 
 Chap.. 
 
 S^^UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.^ 
 
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 
 In 1844. 
 
THE POET 
 AMONG THE HILLS 
 
 Oliver Wendell Holmes 
 
 IN BERKSHIRE. 
 
 His Berkshire Poems, some of them now first published, with 
 
 Historic and Descriptive hicidents Concerning the 
 
 Poems, the Poet, and his Literary Neighbors. 
 
 His Poetic, Personal and Ancestral Relations to the County. 
 
 Jf' E: A. SMITH. 
 
 The memory of great men is the noblest inheritance of their country.' 
 
 PITTSFIELD, MASS.: 
 GEORGE BLATCHFORD 
 
 1895. 
 
 |(iM 
 
60800 
 
 Copyright, 1895, by 
 J. E. A. SMITH. 
 
"Whatever strengthens our local attachments is favor- 
 able both to individual and to national character. Our 
 home, our birthplace, our native land, — think for a 
 while what the virtues are which arise out of the feelings 
 connected with these words. . . . Show me a man who 
 cares no more for one place than another, and I will 
 show you in that same person one who loves nothing 
 but himself. Beware of those who are homeless by 
 choice : you have no hold on a human being whose affec- 
 tions are without a tap-root."— Southey : The Doctor. 
 
TABLE OF CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Prologue. — Why and Because— Dr. Holmes' Berk- 
 shire Poetry Characterized — Fable of a Socialist 
 Community — What Pittsfield is Proud of — Berk- 
 shire Scenery — A Haunt for Literary Lions — 
 Melville and Hawthorne — Longfellow, the Old 
 Clock on the Stairs, Roaring Brook and Kava- 
 nagh, Charles Sumner and Fanny Kemble — Dr. 
 Holmes and the Newspaper Press, . . 7 
 
 L Berkshire Jubilee Speech and Poem. — Sketch 
 of the Jubilee — The Dinner — David Dudley 
 Field's Journey of a Day — Catherine Sedg- 
 wick's Chronicles — Dr. Holmes' Speech from a 
 Table— His Poem of Welcome, . . .49 
 
 n. The Wendell Family. — Jacob Wendell's De- 
 scent — Jacob Wendell in Boston — Connection 
 with Old Boston Families — His Descendants — 
 Holmes Genealogy — Phillips Genealogy — 
 Wendell Phillips— Oliver Wendell in Pittsfield 
 — Curious Incidents — Oliver Wendell Fierce for 
 Moderation ; Friendship for Henry and Peter 
 Van Schaack, . . . . . . 69 
 
 HL Dr. Holmes' Summer Villa, and Life in It. 
 —The Villa— Letters to a Pittsfield Lady and 
 Her Reminiscences — Letter to a School-Teacher 
 —Blackberries and Other Berries — The Canoe 
 Meadows— The Holmes Pine, ... 87 
 
 IV. A Vision of the Housatonic River. — Dr. 
 Holmes' Love for the River — Remembered by 
 the Classic Cam in England — River Loved by 
 Many Men and Women of Letters — The Vision, 98 
 
6 TABLE OF CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 V. Young Ladies' Institute Poem.— Character of 
 
 the Institute — John Quincy Adams Visits It — 
 Graduating Exercises in 1849 — Speech by Ex- 
 President John Tyler — Dr. Holmes' Speech and 
 Poem, 106 
 
 VI. The Ploughman. — Genesis of the Berkshire 
 Agricultural Society — Elkanah Watson — Major 
 Thomas Melville — John Quincy Adams on Agri- 
 cultural Oratory — The Picturesque First Cattle 
 Show — How Women Used to Receive Their 
 Premiums — About Ploughing Matches — Cattle 
 Shows of 1849 an<i 1 85 1 — Dr. Holmes' Report 
 on Ploughing Match — His Poem, "The Plough- 
 man," 114 
 
 VII. The Pittsfiei.d Cemetery Dedication Poem. 
 — Description of Cemetery Grounds — Previous 
 Burial Grounds — Dedication Exercises — Quota- 
 tion from Rev. Dr. Neill's Address — Dr. 
 Holmes and Wendell Phillips— Dedication 
 Poem, 135 
 
 VIII. The New Eden.— How the Poem Was Writ- 
 ten, 145 
 
 IX. Poems for Ladies* Fair. — St. Stephen's Church 
 Fair — A Lady's Raid on Dr. Holmes' Poetical 
 Preserves— Camilla — Portia's Leaden Casket — 
 What a Dollar Will Buy, .... 151 
 
 X. L'Envoi. — The Mountains and the Sea — Presen- 
 tation from Dr. Holmes' Library to Berkshire 
 Athenaeum — Hawthorne's Desk — Pittsfield 
 Characters in Dr. Holmes' Novels— Good-By, 
 Old Folks! 159 
 
 XI. Appendix.— Longfellow's Poem, "The Old 
 Clock on the Stairs;" Fanny Kemble's Ode for 
 the Berkshire Jubilee. "A Berkshire Summer 
 Morning— A Quaint Old Cattle-Show Program, 169 
 
THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. 
 
 PROLOGUE. 
 
 Why and Because — Dr. Holmes' Berkshire Poetry Char- 
 acterized — What Pittsfield is Proud of — Fable of a 
 Socialist Community— Berkshire Scenery — A Haunt 
 for Literary Lions — Melville and Hawthorne — Long- 
 fellow, the Old Clock on the Stairs, and Roaring 
 Brook — Charles Sumner and Fanny Kemble — Dr. 
 Holmes and the Newspaper Press. 
 
 One who glances at the title-page of this lit- 
 tle volume will naturally ask: "What is its 
 object? Why should it be compiled at all?" 
 Impertinent questions deserve no answer; and 
 queries like these would be impertinent if made 
 about a work in the ordinary course of liter- 
 ature, where an author's will is autocratic in 
 conferring titles. But this diverges from that 
 course in a manner which limits the editor's 
 independence — to say nothing of autocracy. 
 Thus the supposed questions, being natural, are 
 pertinent; and, being pertinent, are to be an- 
 swered. 
 
8 THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. 
 
 The answer is not far to seek. Whatever else 
 may follow, our primal object is to bring to- 
 gether from the many poems of a great author 
 a few which are so marked by distinctive char- 
 acteristics derived from the region of peculiar 
 and intense individuality in which they were 
 written, that they form a class by themselves. 
 The purpose in annotating these poems is this: 
 while most of them are now precious posses- 
 sions of all English-speaking peoples, they were 
 local in their inception and development. A 
 description of the scenery which helped to in- 
 spire them, with a narration of the circum- 
 stances which led to their writing, and of those 
 which attended their only public delivery in 
 their author's living voice, may therefore en- 
 able the reader to enjoy, in addition to the 
 inherent charms of the verse, something of that 
 indescribable, and in a degree evanescent, 
 sparkle and flavor which enchanted those who 
 listened to its silver-toned enunciation fresh 
 from the poet's heart and lips, while their own 
 sympathies were attuned to harmony with what 
 they heard by accompaniments that we shall 
 endeavor to reproduce in such measure as we 
 may. 
 
 If, in pursuing the purposes expressed, there 
 shall seem to be a claim in behalf of the town 
 of Pittsfield to some considerable share in the 
 honor which attaches to every place and every 
 
THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. g 
 
 institution with which the name of Oliver Wen- 
 dell Holmes is in any way associated, we ap- 
 prehend that the claim will be made good. The 
 ardent expressions of his regard for the town, 
 which we shall quote in the proper connections, 
 will leave no doubt that if he could himself be 
 conscious of such claim, he would fully approve 
 it, imperfectly as it may be urged here; as, we 
 believe, all who have a right to represent him 
 will. 
 
 Liberal participation in the heritage of honor 
 left by Dr. Holmes would be accorded to Pitts- 
 field, even if her claim rested solely upon the 
 basis that he wrote the beautiful poems in this 
 collection under the influence of her scenery 
 and of life associated with it, and that, before 
 he committed them to the printer, he read 
 them before large assemblages of her citizens 
 and others gathered with them on grand public 
 occasions. Something of this appears in the 
 general collections of his works; but some of 
 the verses inserted here are not included in 
 those volumes; and others do not clearly in- 
 dicate their birthplace. If, however, this were 
 otherwise, it would not fully cover Pittsfield's 
 claim upon the poet's memory. That rests 
 upon a broader foundation, as we shall see. 
 
 Students of Dr. Holmes' works will observe 
 that, in striking contrast with his other writ- 
 ings, there is in his Berkshire poems no allusion 
 
lo THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. 
 
 to scientific or classic lore, save a playful mention 
 of the winged steed that he did not have, as he 
 had swapped it away for a ploughman's horse. 
 Nor is there much of the humor in which he 
 excelled; although it laughs in two or three 
 minor pieces, and pretty gayly in some prefatory 
 speeches. But, for the most part, all is Nature; 
 and Nature without scientific analysis, as she 
 here spreads out her works for all who, like Dr. 
 Holmes, have eyes to see; combined with the 
 human sympathies which left nothing which 
 pertained to humanity foreign to him. A terse 
 writer of many true thoughts says: "Nature 
 has no morbid strain." It is a sentiment that 
 might have come from Dr. Holmes himself as 
 a companion line to that in his Pittsfield Ceme- 
 tery poem: "Cheerful Nature owns no mourn- 
 ing flower." He remembered both these traits 
 in Nature's authorship when he made the trans- 
 lations of her works that his Berkshire poems 
 essentially are. There is nothing in them either 
 morbid or gloomy. 
 
 Said Jean Paul : " To describe any scene 
 well, the poet must make the bosom of a man 
 his camera obscura. Then will he see it poeti- 
 cally." Such a camera Dr. Holmes used in all 
 his paintings of Berkshire scenery. And thus 
 it was that the outcome of what he saw poeti- 
 cally was not reserved merely for lettered read- 
 ers, but was freely mingled with the associated 
 
THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. ii 
 
 mental activities of men, whether that activity- 
 manifested itself in a body of farmers, the fra- 
 ternal alumni oi his alma mater or a whole organ- 
 ized community. But whether his verse was 
 addressed to a learned, an unlearned, or a mixed 
 auditory, his perfect accord with the harmonies 
 of nature and his fine poetic sense, with his 
 all controling pure taste, made it intelligible 
 to and enjoyable by all. 
 
 Dr. Holmes had those rare intellectual gifts 
 which, possessed as he possessed them, afford 
 sure touchstones of genius: Capacity for great, 
 beautiful, and true thought, with a faultless 
 method of expressing it; both the thought and 
 the expression of it being peculiar to himself; 
 modeled upon no other author or school of 
 authors; and transcending, not only the com- 
 mon level of authordom, but its elevations con- 
 spicuous enough to be observable. We speak 
 of genius in the abstract, and perhaps have a 
 fairly correct idea of it, as a congenital endow- 
 ment of some few favored minds with powers, 
 exceeding those of mere talent, for life-work 
 to which it irresistibly impels them. But in- 
 dividual genius is unique, and therefore is to 
 be studied individually. A clever biographer 
 says: "The intellect of Holmes, though mani- 
 festing many strongly marked attributes, eludes 
 all tests, preserves its individuality, and re- 
 mains unclassified among original elements." 
 
12 THE POET AMONG THE HFLLS. 
 
 True; but it does not follow that the products 
 of these attributes cannot be classified. In- 
 deed they classify themselves. The genius of 
 Dr. Holmes has many sides; and it is not for 
 us to attempt an analysis even of that which 
 was turned toward Berkshire. He, however, 
 would be a singular reader, who should enjoy 
 a favorite class of the poems of a favorite 
 author for half a century without gaining 
 some impression of what it was that charmed 
 him. 
 
 In the light of such an impression, the ruling 
 quality in Dr. Holmes' Berkshire poems is their 
 entire naturalness. It is Nature herself that 
 breathes through each and every line. While 
 reading them we feel that what we enjoy was 
 as much an "elixir of delight" for him when he 
 received it from her as it is for us when we re- 
 ceive it from him. We need no analysis to as- 
 sure us that it is the free uncontaminated outflow 
 from a full and pure fountain, and not an in- 
 different stream from a force-pump. 
 
 And yet the genius of Dr. Holmes, as dis- 
 played in his Berkshire poems — which alone 
 concern us here — had distinctive, although not 
 obtrusively startling elements. They were very 
 like the characteristics which a great critic 
 ascribes admiringly to a German biographical 
 writer whom he esteems of extraordinary merit. 
 *' The poet must express his inmost qualities in 
 
THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. 13 
 
 his verse ; and the noblest poetry in all its va- 
 ried but harmonious elements is the visible soul 
 of the noblest man," And, with the slight 
 modifications that we make, what Carlyle says 
 of his admired author will apply equally well 
 to the Berkshire poems of Dr. Holmes, and to 
 himself as revealed in them. In style these 
 poems are distinguished for clearness and grace 
 of method, and for comprehensibility. In mat- 
 ter they point to an author of affectionate and 
 exquisitely sympathetic nature; courteous but 
 truthful ; precise in expression ; of quick appre- 
 hension ; of just, extensive, often deep and fine, 
 insight. This delineates very accurately the 
 characteristics of Dr. Holmes in his relations 
 to Berkshire as a poet. Nevertheless, coinci- 
 dence with the intellectual constitution of Varn- 
 hagen von Ense does not in the least militate 
 against the uniqueness of the American's ge- 
 nius; for in its processes and their fruit, the 
 brain-work of the two men differed as essentially 
 as biography differs from poetry. 
 
 It is no part of our purpose to attempt the 
 slightest critical analysis of these Berkshire 
 poems. Even could such an attempt succeed, 
 the success would be out of all place here. The 
 mourner might as well accompany the wreath 
 he lays upon the tomb hallowed by affection, or 
 the lover the bouquet he sends his mistress, 
 with a botanical classification of its flowers. 
 
14 THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. 
 
 That charm of poetry which penetrates all 
 hearts open to the entrance of pure pleasures, 
 and is enjoyed without conscious volition, is 
 beyond analysis; and, even if some grim sage 
 could resolve such subtile and ethereal joys into 
 their ultimate elements, it would not enable 
 him to reproduce the God-given odor of the 
 rose or the inspired melody of the song, nor 
 would his learned exposition add one whit to 
 any soul's delight in them. 
 
 Every word in Dr. Holmes' verses has its 
 meaning, and every sentence makes its impres- 
 sion. The meaning is clear and the impression 
 is distinct — often incisive — without the aid of 
 any interpreter; but those familiar with the 
 scenes amid which, and the themes upon which, 
 he wrote may recognize meanings and receive 
 impressions hidden from readers not thus fa- 
 vored. To extend this familiarity more widely 
 is the leading object of the annotation in this 
 volume. We trust that it will not be looked 
 upon as an attempt to gild refined gold; but 
 rather with charitable eyes, as only an effort 
 to expose a little more of it to view. Some- 
 body has said that notes to a fine poem are like 
 an anatomical lecture on a savory joint; but 
 surely the most succulent and savory joint may 
 be accompanied by condiments, provided that 
 they develop, and do not mar or obscure, its 
 native flavor. And any good housewife will 
 
THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. 15 
 
 tell US that some attention ought to be paid to 
 the table on which it is served. 
 
 There is a side lesson taught by the wealth 
 of poetry which this collection presents as the 
 product of a brief interval of the poet's life. 
 An old man in his moody moments, looking 
 back over years which have vanished, leaving 
 little to represent them, may be tempted to say 
 with the Portuguese poet : 
 
 What is life? A wild illusion, 
 Fleeting shadow ; fond delusion, 
 Whose most steadfast substance seems 
 But the dream of other dreams. 
 
 But one who has frequently to write even of 
 commonplace lives and in the biographical- 
 dictionary style, learns how much that is worth 
 the doing is often scattered along very ordinary 
 careers, often of much less than three-score 
 years and ten. But when he contemplates the 
 achievements, of deathless fame and priceless 
 value, that were compressed into a fraction 
 of Oliver Wendell Holmes' seven summers in 
 Pittsfield, he is struck with amazement. The 
 study affords a striking object-lesson for the 
 young ; for although powers of achievement like 
 those of Dr. Holmes are rare, it is no reason, 
 because our one, two, or three talents do not 
 mount to the ten called genius, that they should 
 be left to run to waste. They need the more 
 cultivation, 
 
1 6 THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. 
 
 And yet another ground for this compilation, 
 if another is needed, will be found in the hope 
 that it may render some of Pittsfield's own peo- 
 ple more familiar with the poems comprised in 
 it, and incidentally lead to a wider acquaintance 
 with all the works of their author, — to the great 
 advantage of their taste in literature, as well as 
 in other matters. Nor will it be of small value, 
 if, by giving any an intelligent and clear appre- 
 ciation of the great poet's relations to their town, 
 it shall at once strengthen and make more 
 rational their pride in it. And Southey, in the 
 passage from his " Doctor, " which we have 
 made our initial motto, shows that pride in 
 one's own home-town is a most excellent thing 
 to have, even if it leads to an estimate of its 
 merits so undue and so disproportionate in com- 
 parison with the rest of the world, that it makes 
 us appear rustic or provincial in cosmopolitan 
 eyes. 
 
 And this brings us back to our primary 
 motor: Pittsfield's home pride, and the justifi- 
 cation of it by Dr. Holmes' legacy of honor, and 
 otherwise. 
 
 Pittsfield, through the best representatives of 
 its local pride, piques itself upon its complete- 
 ness. Now, completeness is essentially different 
 from perfection. Holy Scripture declares that 
 "There is none perfect: no, not one." And he 
 must indeed be " a blinded bigot" of a skeptic, 
 
THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. 17 
 
 who, living among men, disputes this averment, 
 even if he denies its divine inspiration. There 
 is no perfect man. To be sure, we do now and 
 then, in biographical histories, or perhaps, at 
 wide intervals, in living examples, come upon 
 a tolerably complete man: one whose physical, 
 intellectual, and moral natures all closely ap- 
 proximate perfection. But inevitably in some 
 unguarded moment some little flaw or frailty 
 betrays the infirmity of humanity even at its 
 best. In the common mass of men, the perfec- 
 tion of an individual in one quality or in one 
 ability is most often attained by the sacrifice of 
 even moderate excellence in every other. We 
 have somewhere read a story in which the scene 
 was laid a couple of centuries, more or less, in 
 the future, and in a country where triumphant 
 socialism had subjected every thing to the con- 
 trol of a truly paternal government. Men and 
 women were married, being officially paired 
 after an official examination to determine their 
 fitness for each other. The children born to 
 this officially authorized union were trained by 
 government officials for the special occupation 
 and position in the world to which they had 
 been officially assigned in babyhood, after a 
 phrenological inspection — also official — to ascer- 
 tain for what, in official opinion, wise Nature 
 created each particular little one. Under this 
 official process all the mental and physical 
 2 
 
1 8 THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. 
 
 faculties of a child which his officially pre- 
 determined station in life demanded were per- 
 fectly developed. All the rest dwindled to 
 iiselessness. Thus the fabled state had perfect 
 blacksmiths and barristers, clergymen and car- 
 penters, hair-dressers and hod-carriers, and so 
 on to the end of the chapter; but not one single 
 complete man. 
 
 Now, even as men are, so are the towns which 
 they build, inhabit, and, for one reason or an- 
 other, love and take pride in; that is, unless 
 they are of the class without a tap-root, against 
 whom Southey's " Doctor" sharply warns us. 
 There may be towns and cities in which a too 
 predominant devotion to one pursuit in life has 
 had an effect similar to that of the ideal devel- 
 opment and repression of each individual's 
 natural faculties which our story-teller paints 
 as the logical outcome of socialist theories of 
 government. These, however, are rare excep- 
 tions. Either from natural advantages, well- 
 directed public spirit, personal enterprise and 
 liberality, or a confluence of streams from sev- 
 eral of these fountain-heads of prosperity and 
 excellence, most American towns come reason- 
 ably near to perfection in more than one or two 
 of the elements which, if all were present in 
 like degree, would constitute what might be 
 properly called completeness: that is, a com- 
 plete circle of those elements, such as manu- 
 
THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. 19 
 
 factures and commerce, with the means and the 
 spirit to advance them ; healthfulness with the 
 best sanitary provisions to retain it; a culti- 
 vated community, with schools, libraries, and 
 other facilities for, and incitements to, further 
 culture; religious institutions adapted to vary- 
 ing creeds and forms of worship; noble and 
 beautiful scenery ; with whatever else is need- 
 ful to invite and satisfy permanent or alternate 
 residents, as well as those who seek a brief 
 resort for health or pleasure. 
 
 What those uncompromising representatives 
 and champions of Pittsfield's pride, we spoke of 
 awhile ago, claim and pique themselves upon 
 in behalf of their idolized town is this, that in 
 it the circle of these widely varied elements of 
 completeness, and of others cognate to them, 
 is, without exception, complete: not that each 
 or any of them is complete or perfect in itself; 
 but that the good town is distinguished by a 
 fairly close approach to perfection in each and 
 is steadily advancing toward it in all where 
 Nature admits advance. 
 
 Philosophic Thomas Carlyle makes an asser- 
 tion concerning the building of men's habita- 
 tions that affords a parallel to the Scriptural 
 apothegm regarding their own moral and intel- 
 lectual structure. "Perfection," heavers, "is 
 unattainable. No carpenter in the world ever 
 made a mathematically accurate right-angle; 
 
20 THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. 
 
 yet all carpenters know when it is right enough ; 
 and do not botch their work and lose their 
 ■wages by making it too right." Still there are 
 many right-angles in the framework of a house, 
 and if most of them do not closely approximate 
 mathematical accuracy, it will never come to 
 completion. Doubtless what Mr. Carlyle means 
 is a legal maxim slightly varied: De minimis 
 lex 7iaturce non arratnr — The law of nature does 
 not concern itself about trifles. Nor should 
 men trouble themselves about trifling errors in 
 their own work. Nevertheless even approxi- 
 mate perfection is not likely to be attained in a 
 structure of any kind unless the absolute is kept 
 in view: and much less if it is deliberately 
 thrust out of sight. Strive as we may, there is 
 no danger of getting near enough to perfection 
 to "botch our work." 
 
 The structure of a town is very like that of a 
 man. It has, or should have, body, mind, and 
 soul ; and each of these distinct components 
 needs cultivation. So long as a just balance is 
 reserved, we need not fear that either will get 
 too much of it. There will always be room for 
 more. Better so: Who but a drone would wish 
 to live in a place where there is no call for 
 effort, or even strife, to make it better? It 
 would be insufferably dull. 
 
 Town? city? country? Call Pittsfield which 
 you will ; for us, it is the same old long-loved 
 
THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. 21 
 
 town. A city charter does not change its 
 nature. The greater portion of its territory 
 still remains quite as fit for a quiet, secluded 
 country home as any rural region whatever; 
 while almost all the rest is a striking example 
 of the rus in urbc, country and city interpenetrat- 
 ing each other. We think that, on the whole, 
 we will keep to the stalwart old New England 
 word, town; under which Pittsfield, like so 
 many of her sister Massachusetts municipalities 
 — and conspicuously among them — has, in one 
 way or another,- won so much honor that it may 
 rightfully be called glory. 
 
 But to return: There is one element in 
 Pittsfield's circle of completeness which our un^ 
 compromising ultraists wall not, under any 
 compulsion, admit to fall one little iota short of 
 absolute perfection. This is her scenery, which, 
 they insist, lacks literally nothing that inland 
 landscape can have to make it altogether en- 
 chanting. This is a trifle extravagant. Very 
 critical eyes — even if not hypercritical or 
 sharpened by jealousy as our enthusiasts would 
 be likely to charge — very critical eyes may by 
 close scrutiny detect here and there a blot, to 
 sustain Carlyle's dictum of the imipossible, even 
 when applied to the wealth of color, grace, and 
 grandeur that enriches the valley here em- 
 bosomed among the symmetrical dome-crowned 
 hills of Berkshire. And yet this extravagant 
 
22 THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. 
 
 claim is so plausibly and pleasantl)' like truth 
 that an observer at all sensitive to Nature's 
 loveliness will find it in his heart rather to 
 sympathize with than harshly to utterly reject 
 it: especially if his visit shall happen on one of 
 those glorious summer or autumn days, when 
 the foam on the waterfalls, bound though they 
 be in servitude to mill-wheels, is "excellently 
 bright," and the hillside denudings of the coal- 
 burner's ax, though rough as his unshaven 
 face, are encircled with undulating curves of 
 a livelier, richer verdure than that of the sur- 
 rounding unbroken foliage; curves that often, 
 on a November or December night, are trans- 
 formed into serpentine borders of living fire, as 
 the dry brushwood, heaped along the edges of 
 the rude openings, is set aflame by a chance 
 spark or by a woodman's match. 
 
 But let pass perfection. What have we, im- 
 perfect mortals, to do with it anyhow? Pitts- 
 field's scenery is at least quite good enough for 
 the best of us; and the best of us best appreci- 
 ate and enjoy it. To its thus appreciatively 
 enjoyed charms, the town's parks and its broad 
 streets, park-like by virtue of their wide fringes 
 of grass-carpeted courtyards, and their noble 
 colonnades of overhanging elms and maples, 
 contribute not a little; but very much more is 
 due to its magnificent outlook in every direc- 
 tion, to a boundary of mountain ranges sur- 
 
THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. 23 
 
 passed by none in their grace of contour and the 
 majesty of their grand curvilinear sweep around 
 the horizon. Standing on any considerable 
 elevation near the main streets, such as the 
 platform-roof of the Academy of Music or the 
 tower of the Maplewood Gymnasium, the spec- 
 tator finds himself, more than a thousand feet 
 above the sea level, in the center of an ellipti- 
 cal valley fifty miles long, with the proportions 
 in area which architects love to give their 
 choicest structures, while the symmetry with 
 which point answers to opposing point exceeds 
 the attainment of art. Within its green and 
 graceful encircling walls lies cradled a rolling 
 country of minor hills and valleys; with, here 
 and there, a fertile plain. A hundred lakelets, 
 mostly in the low lands, but sometimes on the 
 ver}^ hill-tops, dot the wide landscape with the 
 gleam of their dimpling waters; while frequent 
 towns, villages, fine farm-houses, and not a few 
 costly country-seats endow it with human life. 
 Through this superb upland valley flows, re- 
 nowmed in song and story, the "blue, winding 
 Housatonic;" receiving in its myriad graceful 
 meanders the silvery tribute of unnumbered 
 rills and streamlets. Upon this vision of 
 beauty looks down, from the northernmost 
 border of Massachusetts, Greylock, its loftiest 
 summit, in more than mountain majest}' — 
 often of a summer morning, " cloud-girdled 
 
24 THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. 
 
 on his purple throne;" adding grandeur to 
 grace. 
 
 Of course all this is not visible to our specta- 
 tor in every detail; but what he does see will 
 enable him to comprehend the whole. And 
 what he will note as a pleasant peculiarity is 
 that, multitudinous as the mountains are around 
 him, not one is oppressively near. 
 
 Features like these, thus combined, go far 
 toward constituting perfect scenery; and, ad- 
 mitting the impossibility of perfections, let it 
 also be admitted that this " borders on the im- 
 possible. " If, however, Pittsfield scenery had 
 been undeniably perfect and complete in all 
 that meets the eye, those who are now its most 
 loyal and ardent worshipers would have been 
 first to acknowledge that something was yet 
 lacking, had there not been associated with it 
 a record of heroic and patriotic men and deeds; 
 and had it not received a soul from the living 
 and loving presence of men and women of ge- 
 nius, and the magic touch of their pens. With- 
 out such accessories no affluence of Nature's 
 loveliness suffices a landscape. We need not 
 recount the town's brave and patriotic action 
 from its earliest to its latest days, whenever the 
 country's peril has called for it, nor recall the 
 names of the patriots and heroes who have given 
 luster to its annals. Enough of both for our 
 present purpose is embalmed in the country's 
 
THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. 25 
 
 history. Nor should we speak specifically of 
 the men and women of letters who have helped 
 to give it character and fame, were it not that 
 comparatively few readers are familiar with 
 literary biographical history; and did not what 
 we shall say lead up to and illustrate our ulti- 
 mate subject. As it is, we shall confine our- 
 selves to little more than cursory mention of a 
 very few of the very many whose mere names 
 would call up charmed thoughts for cultured 
 loiterers along the delightful avenues that, 
 branching in every direction from Pittsfield's 
 beautiful and historic little central park, stretch 
 away into regions of ever-varying landscape, 
 revealing at every turn what poetic Governor 
 Andrew so happily termed " the delicious sur- 
 prises of Berkshire." 
 
 There is a kind of commonplace people who 
 have an unaccountable but inveterate hankering 
 to get where commonplace people are out of 
 place. Their most preposterous, but seemingly 
 irresistible proclivity is, to inflict names as com- 
 monplace as they can pick out from their 
 commonplace observation upon localities, and 
 whatever else is as far from commonplace, as 
 the commonplace very often is from common- 
 sense. It is not much to the credit of a com- 
 munity with plenty of good taste that its list- 
 less indifference often permits this unhappy 
 craze to have its wicked way: for it is wicked 
 
26 THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. 
 
 to soil with Stupidity what Nature has made 
 beautiful and genius has hallowed. But such 
 soiling- is permitted. And thus it happened 
 that one of the most superb avenues which en- 
 tice the lover of Nature's loveliness into the 
 romantic regions around — and one with the 
 proudest associations — became " Middle Street," 
 for the, to a commonplace mind, good and 
 sufficient reason that it is, beyond all ques- 
 tion, the middle road of three between Pittsfield 
 and Lenox. 
 
 This avenue affords a superb "drive," com- 
 manding broad and noble^ views of mountains, 
 hills, and valleys, and of the Housatonic River, 
 which it crosses. The same, excepting the 
 river, is, however, true of all Pittsfield, and of 
 most Berkshire roads. But this Middle Street 
 — which, thanks to some reformers of taste, we 
 shall not be again forced to call by that stupid 
 name — this Middle Street— this ci-devant Middle 
 Street somewhat excels all its rivals in some 
 regards of which commonplace people know 
 little, comprehend less, and care not at all. 
 There are pleasant, patriotic, quaint, curious, 
 and romantic traditions associated with one or 
 another of all these rides and walks; but this 
 middle road to Lenox has the advantage in this, 
 that it was the earliest highway in the town- 
 ship; being part of the first which crossed 
 Berkshire from the Connecticut boundary-line 
 
THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. 27 
 
 on the south to that of Vermont on the north. 
 Even before the coming of the white man the 
 Mohegans had a trail nearly coincident with it, 
 and more of their relics have been found in its 
 vicinity than in any other section of Pittsfield. 
 It must also have been the pathway of the early 
 settlers from the Connecticut valley; and the 
 magnates among them clustered so thickly in 
 its neighborhood as to make it out of question 
 the court end of the young town. Here and 
 now, however, its predominant interest for us 
 lies in the fact that on it was the summer-home 
 of Oliver Wendell Holmes and that of his an- 
 cestors for three generations before him. Of 
 this we shall have occasion to speak more at 
 large in another connection. It is sufficient to 
 say here that the death of Dr. Holmes revived 
 attention to these facts; intensifying the repug- 
 nance to the insipidity of the old name in the 
 minds of citizens of culture and influence, at 
 whose instance the City Council changed it to 
 Holmes Road. And Holmes Road it will be 
 while Pittsfield streets have names: adding, by 
 the associations which it will recall, a new 
 charm to an already charming region; and giv- 
 ing the city a new memorial of the poet's life 
 
 in it. 
 
 But let us resume our purpose of citing a few 
 examples of authors, besides Dr. Holmes, dis- 
 tinguished in the higher walks of literary com- 
 
28 THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. 
 
 position and eloquent utterance, who have 
 helped to invest Pittsfield with interest for the 
 admirers of genius and the lovers of literature. 
 Naturally the first which comes to mind is Dr. 
 Holmes' nearest neighbor, of the guild of let- 
 ters — Herman Melville. A gentle elevation 
 on the west side of Holmes Road, a few rods 
 south of its namesake's summer villa, is crowned 
 by a spacious, old-fashioned gambrel-roofed 
 mansion, rich in the memories of more than a 
 century. Mr. Melville must have known it 
 well in his youth, when he was in the family of 
 his uncle, Major Thomas Melville, in the still 
 more historic old mansion now known as Broad- 
 hall ; and was master of a district school so 
 located that his nearest way to it was through 
 the farm attached to the gambrel-roofed house of 
 Holmes Road. In 1848, shortly after his mar- 
 riage, and the brilliant success of his first books, 
 '*Omoo" and "Typee," he passed the summer 
 in the same old broad-hailed mansion,* which 
 
 * In calling this old mansion "Broadhail" here and 
 elsewhere, we deliberately, for the sake of convenience 
 and intelligibility, commit an anachronism, rather than 
 change the name with every change of owners, which 
 is the country wont. It was named some three years 
 after Melvill*^, Longfellow, and ex-President Tyler were 
 boarders in it ; and in this wise : It had then become 
 the residence of Mr. J. R. Morewood, and at a little 
 party in its parlors— not by any means "all silent." it 
 was declared that a mansion with so much character 
 
THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. 29 
 
 was then a boarding-house, where, among other 
 agreeable fellow-boarders, he found the poet 
 Longfellow with his wife and children. This 
 summer at Broadhall reviving his acquaint- 
 ance, with its neighbor, the old farm-house of 
 Holmes Read, he bought ii, and it was his well- 
 loved home for many years. He named the 
 place " Arrowhead ;" having, in his first plowing 
 of its fields, turned up one of " the pointed flints 
 that left the fatal bow" of the Mohegan warrior 
 or hunter. He found the mansion a spacious 
 gambrel-roofed house of two stories; he made 
 it a house of many stories; writing in it almost 
 all his later works. Among these the most 
 locally interesting, though far from the most 
 widely known, is the *' Piazza Tales;" so titled 
 because its stories were built upon a piazza 
 which he added to the north end of the house 
 where it overlooks a noble landscape, extend- 
 ing through a picturesque vista of twenty miles, 
 
 ought to have a significant name. The selection of 
 one from the variety proposed was left to chance. Each 
 proposer wrote his proposed name on a slip of paper 
 and dropped it in a basket ; the first drawn from it. to 
 be accepted. This chanced to be "Broadhall," which 
 was written by Herman Melville. The selection was 
 so "pat" that it was hailed with unanimous approval; 
 although some serious, or rather merry, suspicion was 
 expressed that chance— lest she might prove Miss Chance 
 — had a judicious adviser in the person of some one of 
 the ladies of the mansion. 
 
30 THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. 
 
 to Greylock, — to Greylock, ever companionably 
 present in Berkshire, whatever miles may in- 
 tervene. A New England farm-house so vener- 
 able as that at Arrowhead could not fail of its 
 huge old elephantine chimney; and Mr. Mel- 
 ville made it the hero of one of his most curious 
 and characteristic sketches, " My Chimney and 
 I." He regarded it as the overbearing tyrant 
 of his home, as he, himself, very decidedly was 
 not. 
 
 Mr. Melville was extravagantly fond of ex- 
 cursions among the Berkshire hills and valleys; 
 a well-preserved relic of his early passion for 
 far wider wanderings. His rambles were never 
 solitary, and rarely with a single companion 
 unless they involved more than one day's tramp 
 on foot. He rather delighted to lead parties of 
 kindred tastes; often including guests of note 
 from abroad, and always some ladies of his own 
 and intimately friendly families. In such fel- 
 lowship he climbed to every alluring hill-top, 
 and explored every picturesque corner and hid- 
 den nook that he could hear of, or find by seek- 
 ing. Picnic revelers may be sure that whatever 
 romantic camping-ground they choose in Berk- 
 shire, Herman Melville has been there before 
 them, and that its echoes have rung with the 
 laughter and the merry shouts of his rollicking 
 followers. From many of these resorts he drew 
 pictures for his tales; among others, from Bal- 
 
THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. 31 
 
 ance Rock, Potter Mountain — a favorite with 
 him — and the . grand rounded summit — about 
 two miles southwest from his residence and 
 from that of Dr. Holmes — which he named 
 October Mountain for the gorgeousness of its 
 autumn tints. 
 
 An incident of singular interest marked one 
 of his excursions; and though it happened be- 
 tween Stockbridge and Great Barrington, it 
 will bring us back to Holmes Road. We con- 
 stantly need something to bring us back from 
 the wanderings to which we are enticed by 
 Berkshire's beauties. 
 
 In 1849, Nathaniel Hawthorne came to live 
 awhile in the little red cottage, which he made 
 famous, on the border of the Stockbridge Bowl 
 — the Sedgwick-Sigourney name for what the 
 learned map-makers call Lake Mahekanituck — 
 some seven miles south of Arrowhead. Mel- 
 ville had written for The Nnv York Literary 
 World, edited by his friends the brothers 
 Duyckinck, a most appreciative and singularly 
 sympathetic review of "The Scarlet Letter." 
 This article was not only appreciative of, but 
 appreciated by, Hawthorne. Yet when the two 
 authors came to be neighbors, as neighborhood 
 is reckoned in the country, there was at first 
 a certain shyness in their intercourse; probably 
 from the fear of each lest he should seem to the 
 other to presume too much upon what he had 
 
32 THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. 
 
 said and done. It was a sensitiveness natural 
 to the pride of genius; but sp shadowy and 
 irksome a barrier could not long keep apart 
 men so formed for fellowship. It was broken 
 down during an excursion when the two were 
 driven by a sudden, severe, and prolonged sum- 
 mer shower to take refuge together in a 
 narrow recess on the west side of Bryant's Mon- 
 ument Mountain. There, undisturbed by the 
 tumult of the elements, the two great original 
 thinkers and writers, neither of them "made 
 altogether by the common pattern," learned to 
 know each other; mind to mind and heart to 
 heart. Thenceforward their friendship was 
 that of kindred though diverse intellects; and 
 of faith and feeling in which they were not 
 diverse. 
 
 The intercourse thus founded extended to the 
 families of the two friends. Hawthorne's biog- 
 rapher tells us that when Melville was ap- 
 proaching the cottage by the lake, a joyous 
 shout went up: " Here comes Typee!" the pet 
 name they had given him. With Mr. Melville's 
 free, hearty, and jovial, although always high- 
 bred and dignified, manner, this might have 
 been expected; but Mr. Hawthorne, also, could 
 throw off his reserve for a roll and a frolic with 
 children; and he was as welcome at Arrowhead 
 as Melville was at the lakeside. It is not this 
 chiefly, however, that brings us back to Holmes 
 
THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. 33 
 
 Road. As we learn from the same biographer, 
 one who passed over it in 1849-50 might some- 
 times have enjoyed a rare spectacle. If it 
 chanced to be in summer or early autumn, the 
 great barn-doors of the Arrowhead barn would 
 have been wide open, and if he cast a glance 
 within he might have seen the two friends, 
 reclining on piles of fragrant new-mown hay, 
 and basking in the genial in-pouring rays of 
 the sun, while they held high converse on the 
 mysteries and revelations of the world and those 
 who people it. 
 
 We pass from Holmes Road, the Canoe 
 Meadows, Arrowhead, and their memories, to 
 courtly East Street, Elm Knoll and the " House 
 of the Old Clock on the Stairs ;" with the mem- 
 ories they recall. 
 
 The story which locates in " the old-fash- 
 ioned country-seat" of Elm Knoll the ancient 
 timepiece celebrated in Longfellow's exquisite 
 poem has been so often told that it almost 
 seems trite ; and yet a brief, exact restatement 
 may please many readers of the soulful verses. 
 
 Very early in the century now drawing to a 
 close, the old mansion, even then not unstoried, 
 became the residence of Thomas Gold, a law- 
 yer of some note, and a man of wealth as wealth 
 was then counted in Berkshire. His daughter, 
 Maria Theresa, became the wife of Hon. Nathan 
 Appleton, a Boston gentleman of culture and 
 3 
 
34 THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. 
 
 distinction. After Mr. Gold's death, the home- 
 stead, although the property and home of his 
 widow while she lived, was the summer resi- 
 dence of the Appleton family. Mrs. Gold, like 
 all the ladies of the Gold-Appleton connection, 
 was remarkable for dignity, grace, and kindli- 
 ness of manner. Her intellectual character, 
 based on good native abilities, the best home 
 education the country then afforded, and the 
 highest principles, had been broadened and 
 refined by European travel. Her relations with 
 the Appleton family must have been most 
 agreeable. 
 
 After a most romantic wooing, the poet 
 Longfellow " won the heart and hand" of 
 Nathan Appleton 's daughter, Frances Eliza- 
 beth; as one of ^Ir. Longfellow's biographers 
 states, "while she was spending a summer in 
 Pittsfield. " We are not quite sure of that. But, 
 at any rate, they were married at Boston, July 
 J 3, 1843, and the last and longest of their three 
 wedding tours was to visit the bride's relatives 
 and friends in Pittsfield, where they lingered 
 until late in August. Then the poet first saw 
 the old clock at the head of the broad flight of 
 stairs leading from the spacious entrance-hall 
 of the Gold-Appleton mansion. He did not, 
 however, begin to wnite the poem which has 
 made it famous until November 12, 1845, when 
 its memory was recalled by a passage in the 
 
v^^iH 
 
HENRY W. LONGFELLOW 
 In 1844. 
 
THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. 35 
 
 writings of Bridaine, an old French missionary; 
 which also furnished the refrain, "Forever, 
 never! Never, forever" — " Toujours^ jamais! 
 Jamais, toujours T The poem at once attained 
 remarkable popularity, which half a century 
 has increased rather than diminished. And the 
 frequent allusions to it in its author's diary 
 show that it was as much a favorite with him 
 as it was with his readers. The marvelous hold 
 which it took upon multitudes of hearts is ex- 
 plained by the elements of deep thought and 
 feeling which combine in it. The refrain sug- 
 gests and almost expresses the emotions that 
 spring irrepressibly while contemplating a time- 
 piece of past fashion, that has marked the hours 
 as they grew to years, and the years as they 
 grew to generations in an old family mansion. 
 Consonant with this voice from the dial is the 
 story, which the poet makes the ancient time- 
 piece tell, of life and of death in that mansion. 
 This story has its counterpart in mansion homes 
 all over the country and in all countries of 
 mansion homes. Nay; in all essential particu- 
 lars, in cottage homes as well. The poet 
 painted his passing scenes not only vividly, but 
 " using the bosom of a man as his camera ob- 
 sciira;' and the result was what always happens 
 when poets like Holmes and Longfellow adopt 
 the practice commended by Jean Paul. Mr. 
 Longfellow must himself have felt that he had 
 
36 THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. 
 
 celebrated the mansion as much at least as the 
 clock on its stairs; for, it will be observed that 
 in his diary he rarely speaks of the old clock 
 'simply, but almost invariably of the "House 
 of the Old Clock." The clock was of the tall 
 old-fashioned kind -made in Pittsfield and Lanes- 
 boro, late in the last century and early in the 
 present. In old Berkshire families they are 
 preserved as precious heirlooms, while strangers 
 buy them at high prices merely as "antiques." 
 That which Longfellow saw in 
 
 J.-- ">, J -,:."Th@ ol4- fashioned country seat. 
 Somewhat back from the village street, " 
 
 aiid'-made eloquent on its rostrum there, was, 
 som'e years ago, called to Boston, where it 
 stands in the hallway of the Appleton mansion. 
 Professor Longfellow placed one of the same 
 class in thfe hall of the Graigie House, his Cam- 
 bridge residence, where many visitors errone- 
 ously supposed it to be the original clock of 
 the poem. 
 
 Mr. Longfellow's wedding visit to Pittsfield 
 was followed by others. The most interesting 
 was in the summer of 1849, which he spent at 
 the Broadhall boarding-house. He was much 
 impressed by the beauty of the neighboring 
 South Mountain, and the variety of grand views 
 from it. He took great pleasure with his chil- 
 dren on the shores of the charming lakelet in 
 
THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. 37 
 
 the Broadhall grounds, where he one day had 
 an adventure, with danger enough to give it 
 ze^t. The little ones craved some beautiful 
 pond-lilies that floated on the surface, of the 
 lakelet— to which some of the later ladies of 
 Broadhall gave the pet name of " The Lily^ 
 Bowl." There was no craft near, save a crazy, 
 leaky little boat; but, like the devoted father 
 and child-lover he was, he risked himself in it 
 to secure the coveted prize, although the' miser^ 
 able little broken sljell threatened every mo- 
 ment to sink with him. He tells of several 
 pleasant drives, but was clearly the most de- 
 lighted with an afternoon excursion to Roaring 
 Brook. This notable mountain streamlet dashes 
 down a romantic gorge in the west side of Wash- 
 ington Mountain,-^a summit- of the Ho6sacs a 
 couple of miles southwest of Dr. Holmes' villa. 
 Mr. Longfellow visited it one summer day and 
 gives the following spirited account of the ex- 
 cursion and word-painting of the brook and 
 gorge in his diary: 
 
 August 2c?///.— In the morning, sat with the 
 children by the water-wheel in the brook, then 
 walked to the village, for carriage to take us in 
 the afternoon to Roaring Brook. A lovely drive, 
 and lovelier walk. Leaving the carriage at the 
 foot of the hill, we climbed the rough w^gon- 
 way along the borders of the brook, catching 
 glimpses of its waterfalls through the woods, 
 
38 THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. 
 
 and hearing the perpetual music of its murmur. 
 The water is of a livel)^ brown color, like Rhen- 
 ish wine — the Olympian wine spilled from the 
 goblet of Hebe when she fell. We climbed as 
 far as the mill — a saw-mill, bringing to mind 
 the little poem translated from the German by 
 Bryant." 
 
 At the time of this excursion, Longfellow 
 was writing his novel " Kavanagh" — an enchant- 
 ing little volume for readers of dainty taste and 
 thought — and he painted his visit into it in 
 glowing colors. George Lowell Austin, in his 
 "Life, Works and Friendships of Longfellow," 
 says: "The tale was written in the Melville 
 House [Broadhall — Ed.] not far from the Pitts- 
 field home of Dr. Holmes. Most of the scenery 
 and a little of the story was derived from his 
 wooing and marriage." The paragraph regard- 
 ing the Roaring Brook is as follows: 
 
 " Every State, and almost every county of 
 New England has its Roaring Brook — a moun- 
 tain streamlet, overhung by woods, impeded by 
 a mill, encumbered by fallen trees; but ever- 
 rushing, racing, roaring down, through gur- 
 gling gullies and filling the forest with its 
 delicious sound and freshness: the drinking- 
 places of home-returning herds; the mysteri- 
 ous haunts of squirrels and blue-jays; the syl- 
 van retreat of schoolboys, who frequent it in 
 summer holidays and mingle their restless 
 
THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. 39 
 
 thoughts with its restless, exuberant, and re- 
 joicing stream." 
 
 Longfellow was not the only guest of the 
 House of the Old Clock who left choice memo- 
 ries behind. In Mr. Appleton's time many 
 such enjoyed its hospitality. Of these Charles 
 Sumner has for us the deepest interest. In the 
 late summer of 1844, he was slowly recovering 
 from an alarming illness, and his physician ad- 
 vised him that Berkshire air would greatly 
 hasten and confirm his convalescence. He was 
 a great favorite with the Appleton family, and 
 one of Longfellow's dearest friends, having 
 been groomsman at his wedding with Miss Ap- 
 pleton a year before. He was therefore invited 
 to make their country-seat his home as long as 
 he would, and, accepting the invitation, he be- 
 came their guest for several weeks. His visit 
 delighted him and his recovery was rapid. 
 There was one circumstance which contributed 
 materially to his enjoyment, which will also 
 contribute materially to the testimony we are 
 accumulating from the most widely informed 
 and fastidious witnesses to the summer loveli- 
 ness of the region around Dr. Holmes' summer 
 home. 
 
 Hon. Edward A. Newton, a friend and neigh- 
 bor of the Appletons, and a man quick to per- 
 ceive and appreciate intellectual qualities like 
 those of their guest, loaned him a fine saddle- 
 
40 THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. 
 
 horse, enabling him to make frequent excur- 
 sions over the avenues we have described ; 
 whose attractions he very warmly acknowl- 
 edged. But he very soon had companionship 
 which doubled their charms. Twelve years 
 before — in 1832 — when he was a law-student at 
 Cambridge, he became thoroughly fascinated 
 with the beauty and genius of Fanny Kemble, 
 who, then twent5^-one years old — was making 
 an American theatrical tour with her father. 
 His personal acquaintance with her was, how- 
 ever, of the slightest, until he came to Berk- 
 shire. Naturally his first ride after getting 
 settled in his Pittsfield resting-place was to visit 
 his old bosom friends the Sedgwicks at Lenox ; 
 and, with them, he found the lady of his old 
 admiration, a dear, valued, and honored guest. 
 It was a delightful surprise. 
 
 Both had known much of life's changes in the 
 interval between 1832 and 1844. Mr. Sumner, 
 with a ripening intellect and a personnel vastly 
 improved from that of the rather uncouth youth 
 of his student life, had become a favorite in 
 society, and had won a wider than national rep- 
 utation as a writer upon law. Miss Kemble had 
 become Mrs. Pierce Butler, and had suffered 
 much in the unhappy marriage which was dis- 
 solved the next year. Each was now thirty- 
 three years old; of an age and with the finest 
 capacities for the keenest enjoyment of noble 
 
THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. ^l 
 
 scenery and the highest order of conversational 
 intercourse. Neither was without sorrow ; but 
 neither would submit to conquest by it. 
 
 This combination of circumstances more than 
 revived Mr. Sumner's fascination with the lady 
 whose genius he had early learned to appreci- 
 ate ; and she could not fail to be gratified by 
 and reciprocate the admiration of a man whose 
 opinions were authority in the highest intellect- 
 ual circles of America, and were respected in 
 corresponding circles of English life. That she 
 did so, is proved by many expressions in her 
 published writings, as well as by her conduct. 
 Mr. Sumner's feeling toward her is illustrated 
 by a passage in one of his letters. She had in- 
 troduced the English sport of archery into 
 Lenox summer-life, where we believe it still 
 flourishes. Having written of a jolting ride 
 with "Sam" Ward, one day, he continues: 
 "Afterward we looked on while, in a field not 
 far-off, the girls and others were engaged in the 
 sport of archery. Mrs. Butler hit the target in 
 the golden middle." Her triumph evidently 
 pleased him. 
 
 In anotlier letter he writes: "I count much 
 upon the readings from Shakespeare, the con- 
 versations and society of Fanny Kemble" (He 
 restores here her maiden name), "who has 
 promised to ride with me, and introduce me to 
 the beautiful lanes and wild paths, of these 
 
42 THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. 
 
 mountains. She seems a noble woman — pecul- 
 iar, bold, masculine, and unaccommodating; 
 but having a burning sympathy with all that is 
 high, true, and humane." 
 
 The next day he wrote to his friend George 
 S. Hillard, who accompained him to Pittsfield, 
 but had returned: "I wish you were still here. 
 Your presence would help me bear the weight 
 of Fanny Kemble's conversation ; for much as 
 I admire her, I confess to a certain awe and 
 sense of her superiority which makes me at 
 times anxious to subside into my own inferi- 
 ority and leave the conversation to other minds. " 
 
 Here is an account of a Sunday visit to 
 Lenox : 
 
 " I was perplexed whether to use Mr. New- 
 ton's horse, as I presumed his owner never used 
 him on Sunday, but my scruples gave way be- 
 fore my longing for the best of exercises. I 
 left Pittsfield as the first bell tolled for church 
 and reached Lenox some time before the second 
 bell. I sat in Mrs. [Charles] Sedgwick's room ; 
 the time passed on. Mrs. Butler joined us; 
 again time passed on. Mrs. Butler proposed to 
 accompany me back to Pittsfield on horseback. 
 I stayed to the cold dinner, making it lunch; 
 again time passed on from delay in saddling the 
 horses. We rode the longest way, and I en- 
 joyed my companion much." 
 
 The longest way was by the east road, which 
 
THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. 43 
 
 runs along the base of October Mountain, cross- 
 ing Roaring Brook and the Housatonic River, 
 whose serpentine course is here seen to great 
 advantage. 
 
 Toward the end of summer, Mr. Sumner 
 wrote to Dr. Howe: " Hillard is here with me, 
 and my situation is made most agreeable by the 
 kindest hospitality. We took a drive the first 
 day, to Lenox, where the Sedgwicks received 
 me warmly, — somewhat as one risen from the 
 dead. Next day, we made an excursion to 
 Lanesboro, enjoying much the meadows, green 
 fields, rich country, and beautiful scenery. I 
 shall linger here another week." Accepting 
 an invitation in this letter. Dr. Howe made a 
 brief visit to the "House of the Old Clock." 
 After his return Mr. Sumner wrote him on 
 September 8: "Since you were here I have 
 waxed in strength most visibly. To-day I rode 
 two hours as the escort of two damsels of the 
 place; one of them, the governor's daughter. 
 Dr. Robert Campbell, a most respectable phy- 
 sician of the place, called a few evenings since. 
 He found my pulse 112, and said that its de- 
 rangement was difficult to explain. He since 
 met me in the street and volunteered to say 
 that he had thought a great deal of my case, 
 and was convinced that the derangement of my 
 pulse was not to be referred to any organic dis- 
 ease, but to some affection of the nerves; which 
 
44 THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. 
 
 is precisely my version of it. I am doing so 
 well here, making such palpable progress, and 
 friends are so kind, that I shall linger in Pitts- 
 field or Lenox the greater part — perhaps all of 
 next week; when I shall be very strong. 
 
 Mr. Sumner's sanguine anticipations of 
 restoration to perfect and permanent health by 
 the aid of Berkshire air were fully realized; 
 although something of the credit may be claimed 
 for the very agreeable — not to say enchanting — 
 circumstances under which he breathed it. 
 This pleasant and interesting episode in the 
 earlier life of the great orator and statesman is 
 also a pleasant and interesting episode in the 
 story of Pittsfield and Lenox life. We present 
 the pictures of his rides and walks with the 
 great actress and woman of genius, as charms 
 wherewith those who follow in the scenes which 
 delighted them may conjure up fantasies of 
 delight for themselves. 
 
 Longfellow fully shared Sumner's admiration 
 for Fanny Kemble; and in neither did it fade 
 with time. Both were in raptures with her 
 Shakespearian readings. After one at Boston, 
 in 1849, when Longfellow had recently returned 
 from Pittsfield and Mrs. Kemble from Lenox, he 
 wrote her a sonnet complimenting it as it de- 
 served. "It pleased her much," and Sumner 
 copied it for publication in the FA'enuig Tran- 
 script : a pretty little incident of the beautiful 
 
THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. 45 
 
 friendships of the little group of great minds to 
 which the poet and the orator belonged. 
 
 In 1853 Nathan Appleton sold the House of 
 the Old Clock to Thomas F. Plunkett, who 
 made it his residence. But the " free-hearted 
 hospitality" that "used to be," continued to be, 
 and was enjoyed by the same class of guests. 
 We can, however, mention only one; Dr. Josiah 
 Gilbert Holland, editor, essayist, novelist, poet, 
 and historian, who was for many 5^ears in many 
 ways associated with Pittsfield from the time 
 when he was a student in its medical college ; and 
 whose careful and most appreciative biography 
 was written by Mrs. H. M. Plunkett, the present 
 mistress of the " Old House" of many memories. 
 
 We may seem to have wandered far from our 
 asserted theme; but we wish to remind the 
 reader that the region which Dr. Holmes loved 
 so well, and honored so much, that it can almost 
 be called his own, had charms for other like 
 minds. We would avoid leaving the impression 
 that he was for Pittsfield the lone swallow that 
 does not make a summer, whereas he was in 
 fact the most tuneful, the most loving, and the 
 most nearly native of many summer song-birds 
 who have loved its haunts and left them melo- 
 dious with the echoes of their praise: foremost 
 also among the men of genius whose fame, 
 mingling with the glory of its scenery, imparts 
 to it a richer tinge. 
 
46 THE POET AMOXG THE HILLS. 
 
 " I hope there will be luster enough in one or 
 more of the names with which I shall gild my 
 pages to redeem the dullness of all that is 
 merely personal in my recollections." Dr. 
 Holmes printed this in the introduction to one 
 of his books. We have carefully examined the 
 volume in question; and there is not in it the 
 slightest particle of dullness to be redeemed. 
 The sentence quoted is tlierefore entirely super- 
 fluous. Being utterly useless to its author, and 
 exactly adapted to our needs, we shall appro- 
 priate and adopt it without scruple. By the 
 way, it was quite a habit of Dr. Holmes to write 
 that which his readers wished they had written 
 themselves; it being just what they thought 
 they had thought before. 
 
 Dr. Holmes' verse, both in its sentiments and 
 in his generous contributions of it to the town's 
 great intellectual festivals, shows clearly his 
 warm regard for Pittsfield; but yet stronger 
 evidence that his love for the place was genuine 
 and deep, is found in his private correspondence 
 and public prose utterances. Of these we shall 
 present some glowing words in their natural 
 connections; but will here content ourselves 
 with a single letter. It is not more emphatic 
 or explicit than those to be quoted later; but 
 we give it place here because it states concisely 
 some points which introduce the writer as a 
 Berkshire man, and prepare the way for much 
 
THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. 47 
 
 that is to follow. Dr. Holmes once said in 
 Pittsfield that he was so fond of newspaper read- 
 ing that he was obliged to systematically re- 
 strict himself to a limited number in each class 
 that he cared for. It was another proof of his 
 kindly sympathies with our common humanity. 
 It will be observed that, except "The Vision of 
 the Housatonic River," every one of the poems 
 in the present collection was first printed in a 
 Pittsfield newspaper. This, to be sure, was be- 
 cause they were included in reports of public 
 occasions. Still as their author expressed sur- 
 prise and pleasure on account of the accuracy of 
 the work, the representatives of the local press 
 will be apt to remember it. The letter which 
 we quote was addressed to the Berkshire Press 
 Club, declining an invitation to its annual din- 
 ner in 1880. It is a good example of the court- 
 esy with which Dr. Holmes uniformly softened 
 such declinations when compelled to make 
 them. Still his uniform utterances at every 
 opportunity leave no doubt of the sincerity of 
 what he wrote as to his relations with Pittsfield. 
 
 "Boston, Oct. 16, 1880. 
 " Gentlemen : — I thank you for your very kind 
 invitation to enjoy a social evening with the 
 Berkshire editors and reporters. Seven of the 
 happiest summers of my life were passed in 
 Berkshire with the Housatonic running through 
 
4S THE POET AMOXG THE HILLS. 
 
 my meadows and Greylock looking into my 
 study windows. It pleases me to know that I 
 am not wholly forgotten in the flourishing town 
 and almost city of Pittsfield, to which my great- 
 grandfather (Col. Jacob Wendell) rode, on 
 horseback through the woods, when it was an 
 Indian settlement or camp. 
 
 " I regret very much that it is not in my 
 power to be with you at the American House; 
 but no outside guest can be missed at a meeting 
 enlivened by the wit and talent sure to be seated 
 at a board surrounded by editors and reporters. 
 " I am, etc. , 
 
 "O. W. Holmes." 
 
II. 
 
 BERKSHIRE JUBILEE SPEECH AND POEM. 
 
 Sketch of the Jubilee — The Dinner — David Dudley 
 Field's Journey of a Day — Catherine Sedgwick's 
 Chronicles— Dr. Holmes' Table Speech — His Poem 
 of Welcome. 
 
 Something of Oliver Wendell Holmes' rela- 
 tion to Pittsfield and Berkshire is intimated in 
 the letter with which our prologue closes; but 
 his affiliation with the town will appear more 
 definitely as we proceed; still using his own 
 words as a basis and guide. And we begin 
 with those spoken at the Berkshire Jubilee of 
 1844. The Berkshire Jubilee: — Fifty years ago 
 that name would have needed no interpreta- 
 tion in a connection like this. The unique 
 character of the festival, the many famous par- 
 ticipants in it, and the great number of the 
 mountain county's sons and daughters who 
 flocked to it from homes in all sections of the 
 Union, secured liberal reports of, and comments 
 upon, its proceedings in all considerable Amer- 
 ican journals. But all things are food for 
 edacious Time; and even a little half-century 
 4 49 
 
50 THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. 
 
 is a ravenous devoiirer of newspaper fame. The 
 story of the Jubilee is still locally extant; but 
 even at home, although a little revived by the 
 recurrence of its fiftieth anniversary, it begins 
 to take on the phantom -like obscurity of tra- 
 dition. Elsewhere, now and then, a minute 
 biographer alludes to it in his memoir of some 
 prominent actor in it; taking good care to pro- 
 vide an explanatory foot-note, or its equivalent. 
 Yet it was a right memorable occasion ; and one 
 that deserves a permanent record. That its 
 name and some hint of its character will be pre- 
 served is made sure by the inclusion of Dr. 
 Holmes' poem of welcome to it in the perma- 
 nent collection of his works; but even there it 
 calls for the annotation we are to give it here. 
 
 The Jubilee. 
 
 For some years previous to 1844, Rev. Rus- 
 sell S. Cook, of New York, a native of New 
 Marlboro, a resident of Lenox in his youth, and 
 a frequent loving visitor to it in his mature life, 
 was secretary of the American Tract Society. 
 His official duties called him to all sections of 
 the country; and everywhere he found Berk- 
 shire men in respectable, and often in high, 
 positions. Impressed by the spontaneous ex- 
 pressions of warm regard for their old mountain 
 homes by those whom he earliest met, further 
 
THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. 51 
 
 inquiry wherever he went convinced him that 
 this feeling was uniform and universal. 
 
 From these and cognate observations, Mr. 
 Cook conceived the idea of bringing these emi- 
 grants together in a social reunion at some 
 convenient central point in Berkshire, with a 
 view to forming a band of union among them ; 
 awakening in the citizens of the county an in- 
 terest in the fame and usefulness of those who 
 had gone out from among them, and also of 
 furnishing to the world an illustration of the 
 influence New England was having in the for- 
 mation of the character of the country. Mr, 
 Cook suggested this idea from time to time in 
 his official visits, and found it everywhere cor- 
 dially approved; but its realization was post- 
 poned, awaiting the recovery of the country 
 from the financial depression of 1837 ; and prob- 
 ably, also, the completion of the Western (now 
 the Boston and Albany) Railroad to Pittsfield, 
 which did not happen until the late fall of 1842. 
 In the spring of 1843, Mr. Cook, incidentally 
 meeting Judge Joshua A. Spencer, of Utica, a 
 native of Great Barrington, broached the sub- 
 ject to him. The judge heartily concurred in 
 his idea, and the two gentlemen agreed upon a 
 plan which was afterward substantially carried 
 out. Both were men of influence personally, as 
 well as from their official positions. Leading 
 New York newspapers gave their earnest assist- 
 
52 THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. 
 
 ance, the name " Berkshire Jubilee" being first 
 printed in the Journal of Commerce, whose editor, 
 Colonel Stone, was foremost in his helpfulness. 
 There was no difficulty in organizing a " New 
 York Committee" zealous for the proposed re- 
 union, with names upon it fit to conjure with: 
 such as William Cullen Bryant, Orville Dewey, 
 Judge Samuel R. Betts, David Dudley Field, 
 Theodore Sedgwick, Marshall S. Bidwell, and 
 Drake Mills. This committee communicated 
 with gentlemen in Pittsfield, where, and in the 
 county, committees were formed for the local 
 work. 
 
 Then all went swimmingly. It was deter- 
 mined to hold the Jubilee at Pittsfield, August 
 22 and 23, 1844. The program called for a ser- 
 mon and historical poem on the first day, an 
 oration in the forenoon and a dinner in the 
 afternoon of the second: all preceded by formal 
 and informal welcomes and greetings, which 
 proved to be warm and heartfelt, and inter- 
 spersed with poems, hymns, and other minor 
 exercises, some of which were of very marked 
 character; such as an essay upon the then re- 
 cently deceased William Ellery Channing by 
 his friend Miss Sedgwick, and an ode on Berk- 
 shire by Mrs. Frances Ann (Fanny) Kemble. 
 
 Near the Pittsfield Union Railroad passenger 
 station — which indeed stands on the edge of its 
 southern slope — there rises the most conspicuous 
 
THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. 53 
 
 natural elevation in the township, save its very 
 narrow mountain borders. It is almost two 
 hundred rods long and forty wide, and its sum- 
 mit is about sixty feet above the mean level of 
 the city streets. It was originally the farm of 
 Dr. Timothy Childs, one of the most honored 
 of Pittsfield's Revolutionary patriots; and, al- 
 though it is now covered with fine streets and 
 avenues, in 1844 there was no house upon it 
 except the homestead which he built, and in 
 his lifetime occupied. Thus it commanded an 
 entirely unobstructed view of the noble valley, 
 with ever-majestic Greylock looking down upon 
 it from the north, and the graceful triune Lenox 
 Range, with Yocun's Seat, its loftiest peak, not 
 far away on the south. The Housatonic flowed 
 along its western base, and the village lay smil- 
 ing on the east. 
 
 All its memories and features marked this 
 fair hill as the proper spot for most of the exer- 
 cises of the Jubilee; and a platform was erected 
 near the southern extremity of its summit upon 
 which it was planned to conduct all, except the 
 receptions and the dinner. But, when the peo- 
 ple had assembled for the sermon, a violent 
 rain-storm drove them, " in most admired dis- 
 order," from the hill to the time-honored, fairly 
 handsome and spacious Congregationar church. 
 There the sermon was preached by that most 
 eminent educator, metaphysician, and pulpit 
 
54 THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. 
 
 orator, President Mark Hopkins of Williams 
 College. Dr. Hopkins has been happily char- 
 acterized as " massive-minded ;'* and his Jubilee 
 sermon was what was to be expected from such 
 a preacher. But he was also a true son of one 
 of the most Berkshire of all old Berkshire fami- 
 lies. He dearly loved the scenery which had 
 delighted him from childhood, and he was proud 
 of the history in whose glories he had good right 
 to share. He knew well how to prize all that 
 went to make up the grand mountain-walled 
 individuality which peculiarly characterizes the 
 county. Naturally inspired by an occasion 
 which kindled and concentrated thought of all 
 this, many poetic passages glowed, like Alpine 
 roses, among his massive sentences. 
 
 A poem by Rev. Dr. William Allen, of 
 Northampton, ex-president of Bowdoin Col- 
 lege, followed the sermon, and, if not such 
 poetry as Bryant would have discoursed, it was 
 excellent local history and topography, and well 
 fitted to stimulate and gratify local pride. Dr. 
 Allen was a scholar and biographical writer of 
 decided merit; but his special claim to the 
 position assigned him at the Jubilee was that 
 he was a son of Rev. Thomas Allen, the first 
 minister of Pittsfield and the " Fighting Parson 
 of Bennington Field;" and that, succeeding his 
 father in 1811, he had preached six years in 
 the pulpit from which he read his poem ; so that 
 
THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. 55 
 
 he might well have been regarded as a connect- 
 ing link between the Berkshire men of the 
 Revolution and those of the Jubilee time. 
 
 The oration on the second day, by Judge 
 Joshua A. Spencer, was a terse resume oi Berk- 
 shire history, told with grace and spirit. 
 Nature, grown more kindly, permitted it to be 
 delivered, with other interesting exercises, from 
 the platform on the hill. Up to this time this 
 hill had been known simply as the " Childs 
 Farm." But Rev. Dr. John Todd, the chair- 
 man of the Pittsfield committee, in his farewell 
 address at the close of the Jubilee, in the din- 
 ner pavilion, said: 
 
 "We have been thinking how we could erect 
 some monument of this Jubilee. In our wis- 
 dom we have spoken of several; but, after all, 
 God has been before us; and his mighty hand 
 hath reared the monument. That hill from 
 which we came to this pavilion will hereafter 
 bear the name of Jubilee Hill; and when our 
 heads are laid in the grave, and we have passed 
 away, and are forgotten, we hope that our chil- 
 dren and our children's children will walk over 
 that beautiful spot, and say, 'Here our fathers 
 celebrated the Berkshire Jubilee. ' This monu- 
 ment shall stand as long as the footstool of God 
 shall remain." 
 
 The great assemblage gave a ringing response 
 to these words; and the name was fixed forever. 
 
56 THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. 
 
 The Jubilee Dinner. 
 
 The successive parts of the Jubilee were re- 
 markably well balanced; but the dinner was 
 singularly memorable: the intellectual portion 
 being an expansion of the thought and concen- 
 trated essence of the feeling which marked the 
 preceding demonstration. Its story is certainly 
 pertinent to our present essay, as Dr. Holmes 
 was a conspicuous figure in it. 
 
 The main streets of Pittsfield that run north 
 and south are, for some three-quarters of a mile, 
 bordered by plains. Near the northern end of 
 this distance there was in 1812 a large, perfectly 
 level, open field. This attracted the attention 
 of Maj.-Gen. H. A. S. Dearborn, who was or- 
 ganizing the Northern Military Department for 
 the war that was just commencing; and he 
 selected it as a site for a cantonment — a post of 
 rendezvous, organization, and training for regi- 
 ments raised in New England, and for the con- 
 finement of prisoners of war. Pittsfield had 
 been chosen for the cantonment on account of its 
 defensible position among the hills: a protec- 
 tion for which, at the Jubilee, years afterward, 
 the assembled people returned thanks by sing- 
 ing with enthusiasm Mrs. Hemans' " Hymn of 
 the Mountain Christians," of which we quote 
 one verse : 
 
THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. 57 
 
 "For the strength of the hills, we bless thee, 
 
 Our God, our fathers' God. 
 Thou hast made thy children mighty 
 
 By the touch of the mountain sod. 
 Thou hast fixed our ark of refuge 
 
 Where the spoiler's foot ne'er trod ; 
 For the strength of the hills we bless thee, 
 
 Our God, our fathers' God." 
 
 Barracks were erected for the cantonment and 
 occupied by many of the soldiers who won 
 honor in the northern campaigns, and by more 
 than two thousand of the prisoners captured by 
 them ; the privates among the latter seeming 
 to enjoy their captivity better than campaigning. 
 
 When the war was over the barracks gave 
 place to three large buildings erected for the 
 Berkshire Gymnasium, a high school for young 
 men, founded on a peculiar German model by 
 Professor Chester Dewey, one of the foremost 
 American men of science of his time, and one 
 who did a great work as a pioneer in the study 
 of Western Massachusetts geology, mineralogy, 
 and natural history generally. Professor Dewey 
 having discontinued the gymnasium, to accept 
 a professorship in the Rochester University, the 
 buildings were occupied in 1844 by the Pitts- 
 field Young Ladies' Institute, which, although 
 recently founded, had already attained a national 
 standing. Before these buildings, a pavilion for 
 the Jubilee dinner was erected, in which tables 
 were spread for a thousand guests. 
 
58 THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. 
 
 The president of the day was George N. 
 Briggs, who was then serving the first of seven 
 terms as Governor of the Commonwealth after 
 six in Congress: an admirable selection, not 
 solely because Governor Briggs was the most 
 eminent citizen of the town and county in official 
 rank ; but because he was unsurpassed in quali- 
 fications to preside at a festal table like this: 
 never-failing tact, self-possession, and knowl- 
 edge of men, ready and never misplaced wit 
 and humor, wonderful familiarity with Berk- 
 shire character, history, tradition, and anecdote, 
 together with the happiest faculty for making 
 use of his local lore. 
 
 Some thirty sons of Berkshire responded to 
 the president's call for short speeches or " sen- 
 timents;" all of them men of note in their sev- 
 eral homes, and some of wider fame. Among 
 them, besides several who have been named in 
 other connections, were President Heman 
 Humphrey of Amherst College — who before 
 and after that presidency was an intense and 
 ardent Pittsfield man — Rev. Drs. Orville and 
 Chester Dewey, Theodore Sedgwick, of New 
 York and Stockbridge; John Mills, of Spring- 
 field, and Julius Rockwell, the successor of 
 Governor Briggs in Congress, An interesting 
 speaker was Rev. Joshua Noble Danforth, of 
 Alexandria, Virginia, a son of Pittsfield's Rev- 
 olutionary hero, Col. Joshua Danforth; who 
 
THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. 59 
 
 said : " We stand here to-day, forty in relation- 
 ship — twenty-five of us the direct descendants 
 of David Noble of Williamstown — the upright 
 judge, the exemplary Christian." 
 
 A peculiarly pleasant and striking incident of 
 the day was the speech and the reading of 
 Leigh Hunt's poem, " Abou Ben Adhem," by 
 William Charles Macready, the distinguished 
 English tragedian ; which, with Mrs. Kemble's 
 grand Berkshire ode, made a contribution to the 
 occasion from the British stage that was little to 
 be expected. 
 
 Another pleasant and notable feature was the 
 presence of Rev. Dr. David Dudley Field, of 
 Stockbridge, the first historian of Berkshire 
 County, with two of his famous sons, David 
 Dudley and Cyrus W. Naturally the great law- 
 yer was the spokesman of the family: but it 
 is not for that we now specially recall him. 
 In President Hopkins' sermon there occurred 
 the following passage: "Probably most of us 
 have read— for it was in an old New England 
 school-book — of that 'Journey of a Day' that 
 was a picture of human life. And, if it were 
 given us to make the journey of a day that 
 should be, not in its events, but in its scenery, 
 the picture of our lives, where should we rather 
 choose to make it than through the length of 
 our Berkshire? What could be better than to 
 watch the rising of the sun from the top of 
 
6o THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. 
 
 Greylock, and his setting from the Eagle's 
 Nest?" 
 
 " This passage so fastened itself on Mr. Field's 
 mind" that he followed its suggestions, the very 
 next week; and his spirited account of the ex- 
 perience the excursion brought him was widely 
 published in the journals of the time under the 
 title of "A Journey of a Day," and is repro- 
 duced in the recent superb edition of his writ- 
 ings. " The entire length of the county" — he 
 wrote— "from north to south is fifty miles; and 
 if the ascent of Greylock is made the evening 
 before, so that the journey may begin at sunrise, 
 it is possible in thirteen hours to pass down the 
 valley, ascend the Dome of the Taconics, and 
 get a last view of the setting sun from the 
 Eagle's Nest. " This he accomplished: passing 
 through Williamstown, New Ashford, Lanes- 
 boro, Pittsfield, Lenox, Stockbridge, Great Har- 
 rington ; and, over the Dome of the Taconics 
 in Egremont, into the wild, awe-inspiring gorge 
 of the far-famed Bash-Bish Falls in the western 
 side of Mount Washington, where, among the 
 other almost Alpine features, a vast vtrall of rock 
 rises two hundred feet, beetling twenty-five feet 
 beyond its base at its top; the Eagle's Nest, 
 from which Mr. Field and his companion had a 
 glorious view of the setting sun ; Greylock, 
 Williamstown, Lanesboro, Pittsfield, Lenox, 
 Stockbridge, Great Barrington, the Dome, and 
 
THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. 6i 
 
 the Eagle's Nest: what a carcanet of golden 
 landscapes jeweled with precious memories 
 these names call to mind! And to each and all 
 the great jurist dealt poetic justice, both as to 
 scenery and to story. We can, however, only 
 quote his words regarding the Jubilee, and so 
 much of those concerning Pittsfield as relate to 
 the town as its seat. 
 
 Arriving at Pontoosuc Lake, which he locates 
 in Lanesboro, although half its surface is in 
 Pittsfield, Mr. Field writes: 
 
 " One feature of uncommon beauty, the place 
 [Lanesboro'] has: its Pontoosuc Lake, or 
 Shoonke Moonke, as it is sometimes called. It 
 covers six hundred acres; and its bright waters, 
 the road along its margin, and the tall trees that 
 shade it make you sorry to leave it. We could 
 not stay, but hurried on to Pittsfield. What 
 shall we say of Pittsfield; the hospitable, the 
 beautiful? Just fresh from the Jubilee — fresh 
 from the open houses and the open hearts of 
 her people — we drove into the village, with the 
 scenes of those two days fresh in our vision. 
 The intervening week had vanished. We stood 
 again on Jubilee Hill ; we went down to the field 
 where the feast was spread; we laughed under 
 the Old Elm; we saw our friends — our fellows; 
 as goodly a company as we shall see again for 
 many a day. Truly it was a high festival: one 
 worthy to be commemorated — to be repeated." 
 
62 THE POET AMOXG THE HILLS. 
 
 " The valley of the Housatonic here widens 
 to its greatest breadth. Poontoosuck, the In- 
 dian name (pity it was not retained) signifies 
 'a field for the deer.' Pleasant place for hunt- 
 ing the Indians must have found it; and pleas- 
 ant, too, for sojourn it is for the white man." 
 
 We must content us with one more contem- 
 porary description of the Jubilee; or a portion 
 of one. It is from the pen of Catherine Sedg- 
 wick — there could be no better representatives 
 of the people of southern Berkshire at the Jubi- 
 lee, and of their feeling regarding it than Dud- 
 ley Field and Catherine Sedgwick. An official 
 report of the proceedings on the two days of the 
 festival was published in an octavo volume, and 
 Miss Sedgwick contributed to it a five-page 
 resume of the story, written in the Hebraic 
 manner. We quote a few of the more detach- 
 able verses. 
 
 " Hath not the Lord given us rest on every 
 side! Now we will proclaim a Jubilee, — We 
 will go up to our Jerusalem! We will worship 
 in the temples of our fathers. We will kiss the 
 sod that covers the graves of our kindred; and 
 we will sit ourselves down in the old places 
 where their shadows will pass before us! 
 
 "We will rejoice and make merry with our 
 brethren ; and Alemory and Hope shall be our 
 
THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. 63 
 
 pleasant ministers. And we will lay our hearts 
 together, and stir up the smouldering embers 
 of old friendships till the fire burns within us: 
 and this, even this sacred fire, will we transmit 
 to our children's children. 
 
 "And even as they said, so did they; and in 
 the summer solstice, with one heart and one 
 mind, did they come together: the Pilgrims 
 from afar and the Sojourners at home. Even 
 from the valley of the Mississippi came they; 
 and from the yet farther country of the Mis- 
 souri, and from the Land of the Sun, even from 
 the Southland; and from all the goodly lands 
 about Massachusetts. 
 
 " And they gathered together, a multitude of 
 people, old men and elder women, young men 
 and fair young maidens, and much children — a 
 very great company were they. 
 
 " And a great heart was in the people of Pitts- 
 field ; and they opened the doors of their pleas- 
 ant dwellings and bade their brethren enter 
 therein. And they spread fine linen on their 
 beds, and they covered their tables with the fat 
 of the land; for the Lord had greatly blessed 
 the people of Pittsfield. 
 
 " And they said to all their brethren : Come 
 now and enter in and freely take of our abun- 
 dance; for, lo, have we not spread our tables 
 
64 THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. 
 
 for you, and hath not the angel of sleep dressed 
 our beds, that our brethren may sleep therein? 
 
 " And the faces of their brethren shone, and 
 they entered in ; and they said : It was a true 
 report we heard of thee; thy land doth excel, 
 and thou hast greatly increased the riches and 
 the beauty thereof." 
 
 Such was the occasion on which Oliver Wen- 
 dell Holmes first addressed a Berkshire audi- 
 ence; and such were the men and women 
 associated with him in it. 
 
 Dr. Holmes' Speech and Poem. 
 
 Governor Briggs having made a cordial, in- 
 teresting, and appropriate speech of welcome, 
 to which Judge Betts responded in the same 
 vein, the governor announced a poem by Dr. 
 Holmes. The poet was already not unknown 
 to fame, although very far from that which 
 afterward celebrated his name; and its an- 
 nouncement was received with ringing cheers 
 and cries of "Come forward!" The president 
 suggested that he should rather follow the ex- 
 ample of Judge Betts, and mount the table: 
 remarking that this would be an advance on 
 some old-fashioned feasts, where the tendency 
 was rather to get under the table than upon it. 
 Dr. Holmes followed this advice and took the 
 
THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. 65 
 
 table: and when the renewed cheers subsided 
 read the following speech and poem. 
 
 He asked to be allowed, before he opened 
 the paper in his hand, to assure his friends of 
 the reason why he found himself there. He 
 said: 
 
 " Inasmuch as the company express willing- 
 ness to hear historical incidents, any little inci- 
 dent which shall connect me with those to whom 
 I cannot claim to be a brother, seems to be fairly 
 brought forward. One of my earliest recollec- 
 tions is of an annual pilgrimage made by my 
 parents to the west. The young horse was 
 brought up, fatted by a week's rest and high 
 feeding, prancing and caracoling to the door. 
 It came to the corner and was soon over the 
 western hills. He was gone a fortnight; and 
 one afternoon — it always seems to me it was a 
 sunny afternoon — we saw an equipage crawl- 
 ing from the west toward the old homestead; 
 the young horse, who set out fat and prancing, 
 worn thin and reduced by a long journey — the 
 chaise covered with dust, and all speaking of 
 a terrible crusade, a formidable pilgrimage. 
 Winter-evening stories told me where — to Berk- 
 shire, to the borders of New York, to the old 
 domain, owned so long that there seemed a kind 
 of hereditary love for it. Many years passed 
 away, and I traveled down the beautiful Rhine. 
 I wished to see the equally beautiful Hudson. 
 5 
 
66 THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. 
 
 I found myself at Albany; a few hours' ride 
 brought me to Pittsfield, and I went to the lit- 
 tle spot, the scene of this pilgrimage — a man- 
 sion — and found it surrounded by a beautiful 
 meadow, through which the winding river made 
 its course in a thousand fantastic curves; the 
 mountains reared their heads around it, the 
 blue air which makes our city-pale cheeks again 
 to deepen with the hue of health, coursing about 
 it pure and free. I recognized it as the scene 
 of the annual pilgrimage. Since then I have 
 made an annual visit to it. 
 
 "In 1735, Hon. Jacob Wendell, my grandfa- 
 ther in the maternal line, bought a township not 
 then laid out — the township of Poontoosuck — 
 and that little spot which we still hold is the relic 
 of twenty-four thousand acres of baronial terri- 
 tory. When I say this, no feeling which can 
 be the subject of ridicule animates my bosom. 
 I know too well that the hills and rocks outlast 
 our families. I know we fall upon the places 
 we claim, as the leaves of the forest fall, and as 
 passed the soil from the hands of the original 
 'occupants into the hands of my immediate an- 
 cestors, I know it must pass from me and mine; 
 and yet with pleasure and pride I feel I can take 
 every inhabitant by the hand and say, If I am 
 not a son or a grandson, or even a nephew of 
 this fair county, I am at least allied to it by 
 hereditary relation." 
 
THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. 67 
 
 Poem of Welcome. 
 
 Come back to your Mother, ye children, for shame, 
 Who have wandered like truants, for riches or fame ! 
 With a smile on her face and a sprig on her cap, 
 She calls you to feast from her bountiful lap. 
 
 Come out from your alleys, your courts and yoxxx lanes. 
 And breathe, like young eagles, the air of our plains : 
 Take a whiff from our fields, and your excellent wives 
 Will declare it's all nonsense insuring your lives. 
 
 Come you of the law, who can talk if you please 
 Till the man in the moon will allow it's a cheese. 
 And leave "the old lady, that never tells lies," 
 To sleep with her handkerchief over her eyes. 
 
 Ye healers of men, for a moment decline 
 
 Your feats in the rhubarb and ipecac line ; 
 
 While you shut up your turnpike, your neighbors can go 
 
 The old roundabout road to the regions below. 
 
 You clerk, on whose ears are a couple of pens, 
 And whose head is an ant-hill of units and tens; 
 Though Plato denies you, we welcome you still 
 As a featherless biped, in spite of your quill. 
 
 Poor drudge of the city, how happy he feels 
 
 With the burs on his legs and the grass at his heels ; 
 
 No dodger behind, his bandanas to share. 
 
 No constable grumbling "You mustn't walk there." 
 
 In yonder green meadow\ to memory dear, 
 
 He slaps a mosquito and brushes a tear ; 
 
 The dew-drops hang round him on blossoms and shoots, 
 
 He breathes but one sigh for his youth and his boots. 
 
68 THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. 
 
 There stands the old school-house, hard by the old 
 
 church ; 
 That tree at its side had the flavor of birch ; 
 Oh sweet were the days of his juvenile tricks, 
 Though the prairie of youth had so many "big licks." 
 
 By the side of yon river he weeps and he slumps, 
 His boots filled with water as if they were pumps ; 
 Till, sated with rapture, he steals to his bed, 
 With a glow in his heart and a cold in his head, 
 
 'Tis past— he is dreaming— I see him again ; 
 His ledger returns as by legerdemain ; 
 His neck-cloth is damp, with an easterly flaw, 
 And he holds in his fingers an omnibus straw. 
 
 He dreams the shrill gust is a blossomy gale, 
 That the straw is a rose from his dear native vale ; 
 And murmurs, unconscious of space and of time, 
 "A I, Extra-super— Oh. isn't it Prime!" 
 
 Oh. what are the prizes we perish to win, 
 
 To the first little "shiner" we caught with a pin ! 
 
 No soil upon earth is as dear to our eyes 
 
 As the soil we first stirred in terrestrial pies ! 
 
 Then come from all parties, and parts, to our feast. 
 Though not at the "Astor," we'll give you at least 
 A bite at an apple, a seat on the grass, 
 And the best of cold— water— at nothing a glass. 
 
II. 
 
 THE WENDELL FAMILY. 
 
 Jacob Wendell in Boston— Connection with Old Boston 
 Families — Buys Township now Pittsfield— His De- 
 scendants—Holmes' Genealogy— Phillips' Geneal- 
 ogy—Wendell Phillips— Oliver Wendell in Pittsfield 
 —Curious Incidents— Oliver Wendell Fierce for 
 Moderation— Friendship with the Van Schaacks. 
 
 Dr. Holmes' reference in his Jubilee speech 
 to his great-grandfather's, Col. Jacob Wendell's, 
 early property in the township of Poontoosuck 
 was all that the occasion demanded ; or at least 
 all that the brevity in speeches enjoined by the 
 president permitted ; as, with his usual courtesy 
 for those who were to follow him, he declined to 
 avail himself of the evident general desire of his 
 listeners to waive the rule of limitation in his 
 behalf. Still something more in detail and 
 more precise than family tradition -will have 
 interest for many readers. 
 
 Jacob Wendell was born at Albany, in 1691, 
 
 of good old Holland lineage. About the year 
 
 1720 he removed to Boston, where he prospered, 
 
 becoming a wealthy merchant, an influential 
 
 69 
 
70 THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. 
 
 citizen, a member of the Provincial Council, 
 and, besides other important civil offices, colo- 
 nel of the local militia regiment. He held this 
 command in 1744, when Boston greatly dreaded 
 invasion by a French naval armament, and was 
 one of seven magnates who demanded a town 
 meeting to " consider steps for the better pro- 
 tection of the town and its approaches." The 
 steps were taken, and in 1745, when Governor 
 Shirley, returning in triumph after the capture 
 of Louisburgh, landed at "the castle" from the 
 frigate " Massachusetts," he was met by Colonel 
 Wendell's regiment and Colonel Pollard's Ca- 
 dets, and escorted into town amid the un- 
 bounded enthusiastic demonstrations of the 
 people ; the day being " given up to jollifica- 
 tion." Afterward Colonel Wendell was com- 
 mander of the " Ancient and Honorable Artillery 
 Company. " His residence in Boston was a brick 
 mansion, notable for its time, on the corner of 
 Tremont and School streets, opposite to that 
 on which King's Chapel was built in 1749. 
 
 Soon after Colonel Wendell began business 
 in Boston there sprang up something very like 
 a western fever for speculation in the unappro- 
 priated lands in the county of Hampshire, which 
 then included the present Hampshire, Berk- 
 shire, Hampden, and Franklin. In 1735 the 
 General Court granted three townships of these 
 lands, each six miles square, to the town of 
 
THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. 71 
 
 Boston, in consideration for its heavy expendi- 
 tures for free schools and the support of its 
 poor; and also because it paid one-fifth of the 
 entire annual tax of the Province. 
 
 Certain not very light conditions v/ere at- 
 tached to this grant, and three members of the 
 Council and four of the House were appointed 
 a commission to see that they were faithfully 
 complied with. Colonel Wendell was one of 
 the commissioners, and in 1736 he bought at 
 auction the inchoate right to one of these town- 
 ships, which, when selected and the title to it 
 duly confirmed, was Poontoosuck. It the nap- 
 peared that Colonel Wendell had bought as well 
 for his kinsman, Edward Livingston, of Albany, 
 as for himself. It was also found that Col. 
 John Stoddard, of Northampton, had a prior 
 grant of 1,000 acres of the best uplands, and had 
 also purchased the Indian title to a tract in 
 which the whole township was included. Cir- 
 cumstances had made Colonels Wendell and 
 Stoddard thoroughly and personally familiar 
 with the whole region to which their choice was 
 confined,* and all the grantees knew well all 
 that in forest days could be known of the region 
 which lay in and around the spot which is now 
 
 *The Upper and Lower Housatonic townships, em- 
 bracing what are now the towns of Sheffield and Great 
 Barrington and the township now Stockbridge and 
 West Stockbridge, had already been appropriated. 
 
72 THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. 
 
 Pittsfield, as it has been described to the reader. 
 And they were so well satisfied with it that, 
 wise men as they were, they preferred, rather 
 than to make a new selection, to compromise 
 upon a joint and equal undivided ownership. 
 
 The French and Indian wars defeated for years 
 their repeated earnest efforts to effect a settle- 
 ment of the township, and none was made until 
 1752. But, in accordance with the terms of the 
 grant, sixty-three one-hundred-acre settling lots 
 were in 1738 laid out in a central portion of the 
 township, in a compact form. These were in 
 due time disposed of in one way or another. 
 
 The remainder of the 24,040 acres, which was 
 the exact measurement of the grant, was held in 
 common until January, 1760; a division in 1752 
 having, in 1754, on an appeal by Colonel Wen- 
 dell, been set aside by a competent court as 
 improperly made. The abrogated division was 
 made on a petition from Capt. Charles Goodrich, 
 to whom Colonel Wendell had sold an tmdivided 
 third part of his interest in the "commons." 
 Livingston, in 1743, sold his entire interest to a 
 syndicate of prominent western Massachusetts 
 citizens for ^3,000. Colonel Stoddard died in 
 1 748, leaving his Poontoosuck lands to his widow 
 and his sons, Israel and Solomon, all afterward 
 residents of note in Pittsfield. Such was the 
 ownership of the " commons" lands when in 
 January, 1760, a competent and scrupulously 
 
THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. 73 
 
 impartial commission, appointed by the court 
 with the approval of all concerned, rendered a 
 satisfactory report apportioning them to the 
 proprietors in severalty. It divided the lands 
 into squares, averaging about three hundred 
 acres in size ; and carefully classed them as first, 
 second, and third rate in quality. These squares 
 were distributed among the owners to whom 
 they were respectively assigned, not contigu- 
 ously, but intermixed all over the township. 
 Colonel Wendell received twenty-two, and 
 chance seems to have favored him in the natu- 
 ral beauty of some of them. All of the north 
 and west shores of Lake Onota fell to him, and 
 also Square No. 5, afterward the farm of the 
 Revolutionary hero, Israel Dickinson ; and later 
 the park-like estate attached to the summer resi- 
 dence of Judge Benjamin R. Curtis. Its next 
 owner, Hon. Ensign H. Kellogg, gave it the 
 name of Morningside, which is now familiar as 
 that of a busy and populous section of the city. 
 The acquisition that Colonel Wendell most 
 prized, and which is also of most interest to us 
 in the present connection, was that comprised in 
 Squares 56 and 57, which included the Canoe 
 Meadows. In a plot of the township which 
 must have been a Wendell family paper, there 
 is written across the location of these squares 
 this minute: "Colonel Wendell's meadow in- 
 cluded in these two lots; chiefly valuable." 
 
74 THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. 
 
 The old Wendells appreciated this feature, as 
 Dr. Holmes did when he built his summer villa 
 on Square 56, to overlook the meadows and the 
 Housatonic flowing through them. 
 
 Both Colonel Stoddard and Colonel Wendell 
 plainly looked upon their Poontoosuck purchase 
 in a different light from that in which they 
 viewed other places in which they owned lands. 
 " The Great New Englander" died before settle- 
 ment there was practicable; but it was in ac- 
 cordance with his wish that his widow and sons 
 made it their home. In some early archives 
 the inchoate town is styled Wendellstown, and 
 Colonel Wendell manifested his kindly feeling 
 toward it in many ways, as many of his descen- 
 dants have done; among them Dr. Holmes and 
 Wendell Phillips — whose lines of descent we 
 will trace in outline. 
 
 Some of Colonel Wendell's Descendants. 
 
 Jacob Wendell was born, in 1691, at Albany. 
 His father, John Wendell, died while he was an 
 infant, and in 1695 his widowed mother mar- 
 ried Capt. John Schuyler. Her maiden name 
 was Elizabeth Staats, and Jacob was named for 
 her brother, Jacob Staats, who was one of the 
 sponsors at his christening in the old Dutch 
 church. Not long after his removal to Boston, 
 he married Sarah, daughter of Dr. James Oliver, 
 
THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. 75 
 
 "a famous physician who graduated at Harvard 
 in 1680 and died in 1703." Several descendants 
 of this marriage have made their mark in the 
 political, literary, and legal history of Massa- 
 chusetts ; prominently among them Judge Oliver 
 Wendell, Oliver Wendell Holmes and his son, 
 the present Judge Oliver Wendell Holmes ; John 
 Phillips, the first Mayor of Boston, and his son 
 Wendell Phillips. 
 
 It w^ould bewilder any but the best-trained 
 genealogist even to attempt arranging the web 
 of direct and collateral relationships with the 
 Hutchinsons, the Olivers, the Brattles, and other 
 provincial Boston gentry into which Colonel 
 Wendell's marriage introduced Dr. Holmes' 
 ancestry; to say nothing about interweaving it 
 with the vSchuylers, Livingstons, and others of 
 like degree in old Dutch rank, with whom His- 
 torian Henry C. Van Schaack affiliates the 
 Wendells. It has been said that the poet was 
 very proud of his descent, and that this pride 
 colored both his life and many of his literary 
 productions. It may have manifested itself in 
 his Berkshire, as in his Boston, social life: but 
 we scrupulously avoid obtruding upon either. 
 In his relations to the Berkshire public and in 
 his Berkshire poems, there is, however, nothing 
 in the slightest degree to indicate ancestral 
 pride, except the noblesse oblige which governed 
 him everywhere and always; unless his natural 
 
76 THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. 
 
 and necessary allusions to Colonel Wendell in 
 his Jubilee address and in some letters may be 
 counted as such an indication. We wiH there- 
 fore only state, and that briefly, the lines of 
 descent from Colonel Wendell, of Dr. Holmes 
 and Wendell Phillips; adding the latter because 
 the two cousins expressed a like interest in 
 Pittsfield on account of their common ancestor's 
 relations to it ; and also because, wide apart as 
 the political agitations of the country during 
 their middle life drifted them, they always had 
 a true, kindly, cousinly pride in each other's 
 genius and fame.* 
 
 The Holmes Genealogy. — The youngest child of 
 Jacob and Sarah [Oliver] Wendell was Oliver 
 Wendell, who was born in 1734. He married 
 Mary, daughter of Edward Jackson. Their 
 daughter, Sarah, married Rev. Abiel Holmes, 
 of Cambridge, a theological and historical 
 
 * We believe this to be true of Dr. Holmes; and we 
 know it to be so of Mr. Phillips, as frequent conversa- 
 tions with him concerning the genealogy and history of 
 the Wendell family gave us opportunity to learn. Mr. 
 Phillips had a decided natural love for historical and 
 genealogical studies, and had net duty called him to 
 another field might have become the great historian of 
 Massachusetts who is still to come. He once, with 
 evident feeling, showed the present writer a handsome 
 volume, compiled, if memory serves us correctly, by him- 
 self ; which gave an account of those of his ancestors 
 who are buried in the King's Chapel burial-ground. 
 
THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. 77 
 
 writer of note ; and became the mother of Oliver 
 Wendell Holmes. 
 
 The Phillips Genealogy. — Margaret, one of Colo- 
 nel Wendell's daughters, married William Phil- 
 lips, a member of an old and distinguished 
 family and himself lieutenant-governor of 
 Massachusetts. Their son, John, who, in 1822, 
 was elected the first mayor of Boston, married 
 Sarah Whalley, and became the father of Wen- 
 dell Phillips. 
 
 After Colonel Wendell's death his lands in 
 Pittsfield were divided among his heirs, and the 
 squares assigned to each respectively are desig- 
 nated, on the chart before mentioned, by ini- 
 tials. Square 56, on which Dr. Holmes built 
 his villa, fell to Oliver Wendell and his brother, 
 John Mico, who also received several other 
 squares; some jointly, some severally. John 
 Mico Wendell married Catherine Brattle, a de- 
 scendant of Thomas Brattle, the founder of the 
 distinguished Boston family of that name; and 
 some of his Pittsfield land, in one way or an- 
 other, passed into the hands of one of its cadets, 
 who settled upon it; thus planting a branch of 
 it in the town, where it still has representatives. 
 Both the wife and mother of John Mico Wen- 
 dell were descendants of Governors Dudley and 
 Bradstreet. In 1791, Oliver Wendell, Cather- 
 ine Wendell, Margaret Phillips (grandmother 
 of Wendell Phillips) and other heirs of the first 
 
78 THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. 
 
 owner of the township, still retained 1,200 of its 
 24,000 acres and were taxed ^4 toward the 
 building in that year of the town's second meet- 
 ing-house: the same in which, fifty-eight years 
 afterward, Dr. Holmes read his famous cattle- 
 show poem, "The Ploughman." 
 
 Oliver Wendell was, as a summer resident 
 and owner of real estate in Pittsfield, more 
 closely identified with its general affairs than 
 any other member of the Wendell family ; Dr. 
 Holmes' relations to it being, except in the 
 ownership of his country-seat, purely of a liter- 
 ary character. As to Oliver Wendell's life in 
 his ordinary home: Born at Boston in 1734, 
 and graduating from Harvard at the age of 
 nineteen, he followed in the footsteps of his 
 father as a merchant; and in 1783 was one of 
 the founders and directors of the Massachusetts 
 Bank, the first institution of the kind in New 
 England. He was representative from Boston 
 in 1771-72 ; selectman in 1733-34 ; and a delegate 
 to the Provincial Congresses of 1775 and 1776, 
 some of the other members of the delegation 
 being John Hancock, Samuel Adams, and Gen. 
 Joseph Warren. After the Revolution he was 
 for several years one of the Executive Council 
 of the Commonwealth, and for many judge of 
 probate for Suffolk County, and a trustee of 
 Harvard College. 
 
 During the Revolution, and in preparation 
 
THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. 
 
 70 
 
 for it, he was prominent as an active and influ- 
 ential Whig : so much so that local tradition has 
 it that early in the great struggle he came to 
 Pittsfield, and made arrangements with the oc- 
 cupant of his farm on Square 56, in accordance 
 with which the lease was to be vacated and Mr. 
 Wendell take possession of the place with all 
 its appurtenances, including the furniture, in 
 case the turn of affairs at Boston should drive 
 him to the refuge of the hills; and that this 
 was the origin of the family custom of annually 
 visiting Pittsfield. We apprehend that in this 
 instance, as in most others, tradition is truth a 
 little scratched. The facts are probably these: 
 While Boston was occupied by British troops 
 residence there was impossible for a Whig of 
 Oliver Wendell's standing. Colonel Wendell 
 had initiated the custom alluded to, and it prob- 
 ably suggested to his son the convenience of 
 Pittsfield as a place of temporary residence, 
 when his presence was not needed near the cen- 
 ter of Revolutionary operations, or of refuge if 
 any temporary reverse should befall the patri- 
 ots. But the annual pilgrimage was not yet so 
 invariable as it afterward became, and the de- 
 tails of preparation for it at the farm were not 
 so complete. What Mr. Wendell did was, we 
 fancy, to make arrangements to remedy this. 
 In the earliest years of the Revolution and those 
 immediately preceding it, the Tory element in 
 
8o THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. 
 
 Pittsfield was suppressed with a strong hand; 
 but it had been powerful, and was still far from 
 being annihilated. Its leaders were secretly in 
 conference with the British generals, and, if the 
 Royal Government of the Province had been 
 fully and permanently restored, Pittsfield would 
 have been no more safe as a refuge from its 
 vengeance than Boston itself, however it might 
 have been with some of the neighboring moun- 
 tain towns, with their rugged recesses. 
 
 This much at least is certain, that Judge Wen- 
 dell did firmly establish and make definite 
 arrangements for the custom of keeping a resi- 
 dent farmer upon the place and making an 
 annual pilgrimage to it; and that he did him- 
 self adhere to it very rigidly. And therewith 
 is connected a tradition quaint enough to have 
 pleased a humorist like the author of the won- 
 derful "One-Hoss Shay." Gentlemen of his 
 class and time knew how to criticise the luxu- 
 ries of the table and the proprieties of cookery 
 quite as well at least as the most accomplished 
 diner-out now does. A modern reader new to 
 mildewed manuscripts would often be surprised 
 to come across, in their letters and diaries, glow- 
 ing descriptions of dinners technically accurate 
 even to the elaborate menu dii repas; and he 
 might be still more astonished to read their 
 praises of rare and luxurious viands well served 
 at taverns far inland, as, for instance, in Ver- 
 
THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. 8i 
 
 mont. Nevertheless Judge Wendell, in some of 
 his earlier rides from Boston to Berkshire, had 
 so disagreeable experience of country tavern 
 dinners that it demanded a remedy; and he de- 
 vised one. His favorite dish, when the variety 
 afforded by his own table was not to be had, 
 was roast or broiled chicken ; but he saw that 
 his order for it at his wayside inn was invari- 
 ably instantly followed by a mad rush for the 
 barnyard, where, after a breathless chase, an 
 unhappy fowl was hunted down, slaughtered, 
 perhaps before his eyes, and served up to him 
 before the life was well out of its body. Dis- 
 gusted by this barbarism, he ever afterward, be- 
 fore he left home to cross the mountains, had a 
 dressed fowl placed in his carriage to be cooked 
 and eaten at the tavern where he first dined; 
 and where he was supplied with another pre- 
 pared in the same way, to undergo a like season- 
 ing for the next day's repast; and so on for the 
 three, four, or more days of his journey, 
 
 A lady, now long since passed away, used to 
 speak of the carriage in which Judge Wendell 
 made these journeys and rode about town as a 
 marvel of magnificence in her childhood's eyes 
 and in those of her young companions, who went 
 out to meet its coming as those of later days do 
 that of a circus. But the only one of its splen- 
 dors that she could distinctly recall was the green 
 blinds, which it seems answered for curtains. 
 6 
 
82 THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. 
 
 Decided as Judge Wendell's political princi- 
 ples were, and ardent as was his Revolutionary 
 zeal, he was yet so noted for liberality to those 
 who differed from him in sentiment and action 
 that his compatriots pronounced him " fierce for 
 moderation." Some instances illustrative of 
 this trait in his character have a local Pittsfield 
 flavor. In 1777 Peter and Henry Van Schaack, 
 citizens of much distinction in Albany and 
 Kinderhook, refusing to take the oath of alle- 
 giance to the government newly established in 
 New York after the Declaration of Indepen- 
 dence, were " exiled:" that is, placed under sur- 
 veillance in places assigned them for residence 
 in other States; in some of which they suffered 
 pretty rough usage in the wa}^ of close confine- 
 ment and otherwise. Boston and Pittsfield, 
 however, were not among these inhospitable 
 involuntary homes, notwithstanding the in- 
 tense radicalism of the Pittsfield Whigs. 
 Henry Van Schaack, being permitted to choose 
 a residence in one of several Berkshire towns, 
 after brief trials of Stockbridge and Richmond, 
 selected Pittsfield. In Berkshire he suffered 
 little persecution for opinion's sake, being per- 
 haps protected by the personal friendship of 
 Theodore Sedgwick, who was as " fierce for 
 moderation" as Oliver Wendell, who appears 
 to have intermitted his visits to Pittsfield in 
 some of the latter years of the Revolution. At 
 
THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. 83 
 
 any rate, Mr. Van Schaack, a man of property 
 and of much intellectual ability, had so pleas- 
 ant experience of the place of his captivity that 
 he bought the confiscated estate of a brother 
 loyalist who had fled to England, and, after the 
 peace, built upon it the spacious and substantial 
 mansion now known as Broadhall, and lived in 
 it many years, an active, public-spirited, and 
 influential citizen of the town, and a devoted 
 trustee of Williams College. 
 
 Peter Van Schaack's son, Henry C. Van 
 Schaack, of Manlius, N. Y. , published a memoir 
 of his father and left in manuscript one of his 
 uncle and namesake; from which we condense 
 his statements of their relations with Judge 
 Wendell. 
 
 When Peter Van Schaack went to Boston, an 
 exile, in February, 1777, "he experienced very 
 liberal and gentlemanly treatment from Oliver 
 Wendell, one of the leading patriots of the 
 Massachusetts Bay. This gentleman evidently 
 discovered that, in the person of the exile, no 
 common character had been sent to the select- 
 men of Boston; while the latter was deeply 
 impressed by the consideration and humanity 
 exhibited toward him, a perfect stranger to the 
 place, its inhabitants, and public authorities, and 
 with naught to recommend him but his frank 
 and elevated gentlemanly appearance and con- 
 versation, during a few days' stay in town. 
 
84 THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. 
 
 The acquaintance formed under so forbidding 
 circumstances led to a long and interesting cor- 
 respondence, some portion of which has been 
 published. ..." After Henry Van Schaack 
 became a citizen of Massachusetts, he visited 
 Boston, and " made a point of calling upon 
 Judge Wendell with no other introduction than 
 his personal representation that he came to re- 
 turn his thanks for Mr. Wendell's conduct 
 toward his brother, when he was exiled to Bos- 
 ton in 1777. This call resulted in an acquaint- 
 ance that immediately ripened into a close and 
 lasting friendship; during which they kept up 
 an intimate correspondence." 
 
 It might be suspected that the intimate 
 friendship of Messrs. Wendell and Van Schaack 
 was, at least in part, due to the fact that, in 
 the bitter political strife which resulted in the 
 adoption of the Federal Constitution, and the 
 organization of the Federal and Democratic 
 parties, both were Federalists of the most ex- 
 treme type, and never ceased to be so. But 
 another incident showed him equally kind and 
 courteous to his Democratic opponents. Rev. 
 Thomas Allen, the first Pittsfield minister, was 
 very far from being " fierce for moderation" in 
 his Jeffersonian Democracy. His son of the 
 same name, a young man of the highest prom- 
 ise for political eminence, was equally devoted 
 to the same principles, although manifestation 
 
THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. 85 
 
 of his feeling was doubtless modified by a more 
 intimate acquaintance with the world beyond 
 the mountains. He was the idol of the Demo- 
 cratic party in Pittsfield; but he died in Boston 
 while representing the town in the Legislature 
 of 1806, and was buried in the King's Chapel 
 tomb of the Federal Wendells. Remembering 
 what the town of Pittsfield was to the Wendell 
 family, such a burial would seem not at all re- 
 markable, but rather a matter-of-course, had 
 personal feeling between political opponents 
 been as it is to-day ; but in the early part of the 
 century personal antipathies were so interwoven 
 with political antagonisms that this must be 
 counted another evidence of Judge Wendell's 
 exceptional kindly courtesy. 
 
 Nevertheless, nothing hindered his hearty 
 maintenance of his Federalism in his country 
 home, where he was inspiring and helpful to 
 his fellows in politics. At that time political 
 feeling in Pittsfield disturbed church and 
 parochial harmony to such an extent that the 
 Federal church members and parishioners were 
 driven to organize a separate church and sepa- 
 rate parish; and finally to erect a meeting- 
 house. In all this, they had the warm sympathy 
 of the Boston Federalists; but none of them 
 appear to have contributed pecuniary aid ex- 
 cept Judge Wendell, who gave liberally toward 
 the building of the meeting-house and the sup- 
 
86 THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. 
 
 port in it of public worship, which he attended 
 regularly when he was in town. In 1817 the 
 two churches and parishes were reunited as the 
 First Congregational ; and among the church 
 plate there is still a solid silver christening- 
 bowl that was presented by him to the Union 
 Church. His voluntary contribution for the 
 building of the Union meeting-house was much 
 larger than the tax that was assessed upon him 
 and other Wendell heirs for the building of that 
 erected in 1791. It is a curious instance of the 
 incidental connection of minor and widely sepa- 
 rated events, that in 1849 Dr. Holmes saw the 
 accidental burning of the long-disused Union 
 meeting-house, and that it probably suggested 
 to him these fine lines in " The Astrea," written 
 in 1850. 
 
 "The oriole drifting like a flake of fire, 
 Torn by a whirlwind from a blazing spire. " 
 
'1 i 
 
 kii'''^ ... 
 
 
 |..^: 
 
 
 Hi 
 
 6 
 
 #"-r7}?' 
 
III. 
 
 DR. HOLMES' SUMMER VILLA AND LIFE 
 IN IT. 
 
 The Villa— Letters to a Pittsfield Lady and Her Remi- 
 niscences — Letter to a School-Teacher — Blackber- 
 ries and other Berries — The Canoe Meadows — The 
 Holmes Pine. 
 
 In the summer of 1848, four years after the 
 Jubilee, Dr. Holmes built a pretty villa, crown- 
 ing a knoll on his inherited estate: a plain, neat 
 structure well adapted to his purposes. In his 
 journal of August 5, 1848, Longfellow wrote: 
 " Drove over, in the afternoon, to Dr. Holmes' 
 house on the old Wendell farm — a snug little 
 place, with views of the river and the moun- 
 tains." This is tersely truthful. The river 
 and the mountains gave the house its charm 
 for its owner, who never tired of their praises. 
 Every reader of " The Autocrat" will remember 
 his fondness also for trees and his dissertation 
 upon the specific merits of those distinguished 
 for merit. We suspect that his friend, Dr. 
 Orville Dewey, enjoyed his eulogy upon the 
 Sheffield Elm, wdiich he described as "equally 
 87 
 
88 THE POET AMOXG THE HILLS. 
 
 remarkable for size and for perfection of form." 
 He had " seen nothing in Berkshire County that 
 came near it, and few to compare with it any- 
 where." His irreverent remark that "the poor 
 old Pittsfield Elm lived on its past reputa- 
 tion," and that *' a wig of false leaves was indis- 
 pensable to make it presentable," might be less 
 palatable to the lovers of that venerable — and 
 now fallen — tree, did they fail to consider that it 
 was written, not unkindly, but in the same 
 spirit that dictated the poem of " The Last 
 Leaf." 
 
 But, well as Dr. Holmes loved trees, his 
 Holmes Road farm, when he determined to 
 build a summer home upon it, was almost en- 
 tirely destitute of them. Thanks to him, as we 
 shall see, it is now very far from that. But, in 
 telling of this home and Dr. Holmes' life in it, 
 we must call in valuable aid. It is our general 
 design to avoid all mention of Dr. Holmes' 
 private life in Pittsfield; as one not personally 
 familiar with it would be likely to commit 
 blunders, and probable injustice. Remember- 
 ing, however, a Pittsfield lady who, like her 
 distinguished husband, was long an intimate 
 friend of Dr. Holmes, and his frequent corre- 
 spondent down to his latest years, the impulse 
 was irresistible to fill what would otherwise 
 have been ''an aching void," by soliciting some 
 reminiscences of the poet and such extracts 
 
THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. 89 
 
 from his letters as would serve to illustrate his 
 local verse, the life he enjoyed w^hile writing 
 it, and his feeling toward the town. What fol- 
 lows is due to her kindly acquiescence. 
 
 Reminiscent. 
 
 " Dr. Holmes' life in Pittsfield was fascinating 
 to him, and to those who knew him here. Pass- 
 ing parts of fifteen years in Boston, we knew 
 him and his family there, visiting them in both 
 their Montgomery Place and Charles Street 
 residences. When they came to make their 
 summer home on Holmes Road we often ex- 
 changed visits. We frequently drove over at 
 twilight, when the poet was at his best, and 
 would show us, from his library windows, ani- 
 mals and birds in the outlines of the eastern 
 hills; or, what pleased him most, 'General 
 Taylor mounted on his horse.' When the 
 shadows deepened, so that he could no longer 
 see these phantasms, which even daylight did 
 not reveal to us, he would say : * Now, come 
 into the dining-room, and we will have some 
 caviare to the general. ' 
 
 " He was not a ' society man' — observe what a 
 wide difference in significance there is between 
 'society' and 'social,' when they are used as 
 adjectives. Once, by much persuasion, he was 
 induced to attend the first evening party that 
 
90 THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. 
 
 was given by a lady nearly connected by mar- 
 riage with the poet Longfellow's wife; but he 
 was ill at ease; and during the evening I said 
 to him: 'Why, you are just like^ boy!' The 
 reply was ready: * I like that!' he exclaimed, 
 'the best compliment of my life!' " 
 
 Extracts from Dr Holmes' Letters. 
 
 February, 18^6. — I have many nibbles for my 
 place in Pittsfield, from Boston and New York; 
 but it takes many nibbles to make a bite. 
 
 January /j, /cfj/. — Seven sweet summers, the 
 happiest of my life. I wouldn't exchange the 
 recollection of them for a suburban villa. One 
 thing I shall always be glad of; that I planted 
 seven hundred trees for somebody to sit in the 
 shade of. 
 
 July 22, 186^. — I like to see worthless rich 
 people succumb to the deserving poor who, be- 
 ginning with sixpence or nothing, come out at 
 last on Beacon Street, and have the sun in their 
 windows all the year round. [A bit of sarcasm 
 in this?— Ed.] 
 
 July 16, 1872. — I am a pretty well-seasoned 
 old stick of timber or you would have brought 
 me to your purpose [to obtain a poem from him 
 at the dedication of the soldiers' monument in 
 the Pittsfield Park, when George William Cur- 
 tis delivered the oration], I have glorified your 
 
THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. 9I 
 
 ploughman and tried to sanctify your cemetery. 
 But I am older now — set in my ways. I want 
 to put away all such things, lay up my heels 
 and read story-books. — No! my dear madame; 
 you cannot coax me — but it grieves me to say 
 *'No," to you. 
 
 December 8, 188^. — When you meet any one 
 who, you think, remembers me, say that I am 
 still loyal to the old place, . . . and that the 
 very stones of it are as dear to me as were those 
 of Jerusalem to the ancient Hebrews. 
 
 January i, 1883. — A Happy New Year! And 
 as many such as you can count, until you reach 
 a hundred; and then begin again, if you like 
 this planet well enough. ... I delight in re- 
 calling the old scenes. Changed they must be; 
 yet I seem to be carried back to the broad [East. 
 — Ed.] street, our usual drive on our way from 
 the " Four Corners" and " Canoe Meadows" [The 
 Wendell Farm], as my mother told me they 
 called it. It seems too bad to take away the 
 town's charming characteristics; but such a 
 healthful, beautiful, central situation could not 
 resist its destiny; and you must have a mayor, 
 aldermen, and common council. But Greylock 
 will remain, and you cannot turn the course of 
 the Housatonic. I cannot believe that it is 
 thirty years since I said " Good-bye," expecting 
 to return the next season. As we passed the 
 gate under the maple which may stand there 
 
92 THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. 
 
 now, we turned and looked at the house and at 
 the Great Pine which stood — and 1 hope still 
 stands — in its solitary grandeur and beauty; 
 passed the two bridges to the railroad station — 
 and, Good-bye, Dear Old Folks! 
 
 February 7, i8gi. — I do so love to hear about 
 dear old Pittsfield: what is done there and who 
 does it ; how the new city gets on ; and all the rest. 
 
 March 12, i8gi. — You are to be a city. Think 
 of my little boy a Judge and able to send me to 
 jail if I do not behave myself. I have given 
 up my professorship, and am now in my literary 
 shirt-sleeves. 
 
 October 12, iSgj. — What a grand spunky town, 
 Pittsfield is! You are to have ''The Ancient 
 and Honorable there;" of which my great- 
 grandfather, Jacob Wendell, was colonel, — 
 Great changes; but Greylock, the Housatonic 
 and Pontoosuc still exist. 
 
 December 14, iSgj. — Dear old Pittsfield! shall 
 I ever have spunk enough to take another look 
 at it? It would be both a pleasure and a poign- 
 ant ache. The old outlines are there. The 
 trees I planted would look kindly down upon 
 me. But, alas! how much would be missing! 
 And then, you are getting so grand and New 
 Yorky, I should be lost in its splendor and 
 wealth. 
 
 July 24^ 18^4. — It tires me to write now. I 
 cannot give your letters to my secretary. My 
 
THE GREAT PINE AT HOLMES' VILLA. 
 
 Pittsfield, Mass. 
 
THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. 93 
 
 eyes are dim — my fingers crampy. — Were I 
 forty years old, instead of three-score and 
 twenty-four, I would try to buy my old place, 
 just as it 7vas, and be once more your summer 
 neighbor. My habits are fixed. I am ill. 
 Write and aid my convalescence with a lively 
 manifesto from our blessed city of Pittsfield. 
 The pendulum has a very short range of oscil- 
 lation. 
 
 "Alas! it soon forever ceased to vibrate," 
 adds his favored correspondent. 
 
 Letter to a School-Teacher. 
 
 We will quote one more characteristic letter 
 of Dr. Holmes, which is cumulative as regards 
 much in those already given ; but which is also 
 evidence of the great author's kindly regard for 
 the little people who are to be the future read- 
 ers of all authors, and his appreciation of those 
 who are preparing them to be intelligent ones. 
 It was written to Miss Fannie E. Brewster, a 
 teacher in one of the Pittsfield grammar schools, 
 who, in preparing her class for a rhetorical exer- 
 cise upon the life and works of Dr. Holmes, 
 asked him for a few words, to give them a 
 keener interest in it. He replied promptly and 
 pleasantly in a letter that will interest school- 
 teachers and all who love children, — as who 
 that has a heart does not?— as follows: 
 
94 THE POET AMONG THE H/LLS. 
 
 Boston, May 22, 1884. 
 My Dear Miss Brewster: 
 
 I drop all the papers in my hand, to write 
 those few words you ask me for. The memory 
 of Pittsfield is dear to me. How can I forget 
 the seven blissful summers passed there? Most 
 of my old Pittsfield friends are gone; but, if the 
 younger generation still recall my name, I feel 
 as if I had yet a home among you. Give my 
 warm regards and best wishes to my young 
 friends; and believe me, 
 
 Very truly yours, 
 
 Oliver Wendell Holmes. 
 
 There are passages in some of Dr. Holmes' 
 prose writings which show how observant he 
 was of features in the region about his villa, that 
 challenge observation less boldly than the moun- 
 tains, the rivers, and the meadows; and they 
 show how suggestive of thought even little 
 things were to him. In one of his books he 
 says: 
 
 " In Pittsfield I missed the huckleberry, the 
 bayberry, the sweet fern, and the barberry. At 
 least there were none near my residence, so far 
 as I know. But we have blackberries — a great 
 number of the high-bush kind. I wonder if 
 others have observed what an imitative fruit it 
 is. I have tasted the strawberry, the pineapple, 
 and I do not know how many other flavors in it. 
 
THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. 95 
 
 If you think a little and have read Darwin and 
 Huxley, perhaps you will believe that it and 
 all the fruits it tastes of may have come from a 
 common progenitor." 
 
 For Dr. Holmes the blackberry seems to have 
 been among berries what the mockingbird is 
 among birds. It would not be strange if the 
 reader, the next time he enjoys a plate of black- 
 berries— or better, when he eats them fresh from 
 the bush — should be enabled by this paragraph 
 to detect some of these borrowed flavors. 
 
 The sweet fern grows in abundance along the 
 base of the Taconic hills some four or five miles 
 west of Dr. Holmes' residence, and some of 
 their summits are prolific of blueberries. To 
 be sure the blueberry imperfectly supplies the 
 place of the luscious black huckleberry; but 
 then the huckleberry bush is often underlaid 
 by a rattlesnake or two, while Pittsfield is as 
 free as Ireland itself from that terror of rocky 
 and swampy lands. A few bushes of the bar- 
 berry grow sporadically on the hills, but they 
 do not take kindly, or unkindl)', to the soil, and 
 cover acres of it with their prickly, although 
 prettily adorned and spicily fruited, brambles, 
 as they do in eastern Massachusetts and New 
 Hampshire. 
 
 Here is another instance of Dr. Holmes' 
 thoughtful observation of little things about his 
 residence: The Canoe Meadows on his estate. 
 
96 THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. 
 
 SO often mentioned in our story, — and on which 
 he looked with pride from his library windows 
 and the pleasant rear piazza of his villa — were 
 so named because the Stockbridge Indians were 
 accustomed to leave their birch canoes in them 
 while they visited the graves of their fathers 
 near the opposite shore of the Housatonic, which 
 flows through them; and probably also while 
 hunting or trapping in the neighborhood. This 
 is his statement of and comment on his aborigi- 
 nal findings there : 
 
 " At Cantabridge near the sea, I have once or 
 twice turned up an Indian arrowhead in a fresh 
 furrow. At Canoe Meadows in the Berkshire 
 mountains, I have found Indian arrowheads. 
 So everywhere, Indian arrowheads. Whether 
 a hundred or a thousand years old, who knows? 
 and who cares? There is no history to the red 
 race. ... A few instincts walking about on 
 legs, and holding a tomahawk: — There is the 
 Indian for all time." 
 
 There is an underlying touch of pathos in 
 Dr. Holmes' mention of the great pine upon 
 which his last look lingered when for the last 
 time he left his home by the Housatonic. It 
 was the only large and handsome tree on his 
 estate when he inherited it, and we seem to re- 
 member a statement regarding it, from his own 
 pen, more extended than that quoted. But, 
 like many similar memories, it may be only 
 
THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. ^-j 
 
 seeming. At least, we cannot, for the life of 
 us, recall when, and in what work, we read it, 
 if we read it at all ; and the seeming may have 
 come from conversation or a dream. We can 
 and do, however, present a fine portrait of the 
 noble tree, from which a fair conception of it, 
 as it now stands, may be gained. 
 7 
 
IV. 
 
 A VISION OF THE HOUSATpNIC RIVER. 
 
 Dr. Holmes Loved the River— Remembered It by the 
 English River Cam— Loved also by Many Men and 
 Women of Letters— The Poem. 
 
 Dr. Holmes' affection for the Housatonic 
 River, and his pride in its graceful winding 
 through his ancestral acres, within sight from 
 his library windows, were manifested on ever)' 
 fitting opportunity. Probably as a humorist 
 and proprietor of the Canoe Meadows, and per- 
 haps as a "medicine man" as well, he approved 
 the time-honored local pun that the best of all 
 tonics is the Housatonic. A striking instance 
 of his fond memory of the familiar stream ap- 
 pears in his " Hundred Days Trip to Europe" in 
 1886. During his visit to England he received 
 the honorary degree of LL. D. from the Univer- 
 sity of Cambridge, there being some very 
 flattering demonstrations of approval by the as- 
 sembly while the ceremony of conferring it 
 was going on. He gives a modest account of 
 it in his book, and a pleasing one of the old col- 
 lege town. But even on an occasion when a 
 98 
 
THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. 99 
 
 good degree of personal pride would have been 
 pardonable, he did not forget his old home, and 
 his closing paragraph of the story is this : 
 
 " The University left a very deep impression 
 on my mind, in which a few grand objects pre- 
 dominate over all the rest; all being delightful. 
 I was fortunate enough to see the gathering of 
 the boats, which is the last scene in the annual 
 procession. The show was altogether lovely. 
 The pretty river [the Cam] about as wide as the 
 Housatonic, I should judge, as that slender 
 stream flows through Canoe Meadow — my old 
 Pittsfield residence — the gaily dressed people 
 who crowded the banks, the boats with the gal- 
 lant young oarsmen who handled them so skill- 
 fully made a picture not often excelled." 
 
 Dr. Holmes was not alone in his appreciation 
 of 
 
 "The gentle river winding free 
 Through realms of peace and liberty." 
 
 Long ago, when the Housatonic wound its 
 sinuous way through an almost unbroken and 
 not altogether peaceful forest, the great student 
 of man's will, Jonathan Edwards, recognized 
 its beauty, and, doubtless, resting now and then 
 ^ from herculean labors in his liliputian mental 
 Jl workshop at Stockbridge, strolled across the 
 street to enjoy it, and be soothed by the " v^'^r- 
 bling tone" of its rippling waters. Since that 
 
lOO THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. 
 
 great thinker bade it adieu, other great thinkers 
 of thoughts far other than his, but loving it as 
 he did, have celebrated it in prose and verse 
 until now it is well-nigh the most classic of 
 American streams. Among those who have 
 contributed to its fame, most of them having 
 either permanent or temporary homes near its 
 banks, are Catherine Sedgwick, William Cullen 
 Bryant, David Dudley Field, Herman Melville, 
 Henry Ward Beecher, Nathaniel Hawthorne, 
 Fanny Kemble, Lydia Huntley Sigourney, 
 Henry W. Longfellow, and Dr. William Allen, 
 besides scores of minor writers. Its most marked 
 tribute from Dr. Holmes' pen is " The Vision of 
 THE HousATONic RivER," which was written 
 and used as an epilogue to its author's lecture 
 on Wordsworth. The reader will bear in mind 
 its original purpose; and also that the book re- 
 ferred to iti the eighth verse is Wordsworth's 
 poems, with their introduction of English scen- 
 ery, meadow-flora, and bird-life. In lieu of the 
 lecture, we will preface the "Vision" with what 
 the Autocrat wrote of the Housatonic and its sur- 
 roundings in very poetic prose. After dwelling 
 awhile on pleasant memories of a favorite Con- 
 necticut resort, the Autocrat continues: 
 
 " And again, once more among those other 
 hills that shut in the amber-flowing Housatonic, 
 — dark stream, but clear, like lucid orbs that 
 shine between the lids of auburn-haired, sherry- 
 
THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. lol 
 
 wine-eyed demi-blondes, — in the home over- 
 looking the winding stream and the vsmooth flat 
 meadow; looked down upon by wild hills, 
 where the tracks of bears and catamounts may 
 yet sometimes be seen on the winter snow ; fac- 
 ing the twin summits which rise, far north — 
 the highest waves of the great land-storm in all 
 this billowy region — suggestive to mad fancies 
 of the breasts of a half-buried Titaness, stretched 
 out by a stray thunderbolt and hastily hidden 
 away beneath the leaves of the forest : in that 
 home where seven blessed summers were passed, 
 which stand in memory like the Seven Golden 
 Candlesticks in the beatific vision of the holy 
 dreamer . . . this long articulated sigh of 
 reminiscences — this calenture which shows me 
 the maple-shaded plains of Berkshire and the 
 mountain-circled green of Grafton." 
 
 The Vision. 
 
 Come, spread your wings as I spread mine 
 
 And leave the crowded hall, 
 For where the eyes of twilight shine 
 
 O'er evening's western wall. 
 
 These are the pleasant Berkshire hills, 
 
 Each with its leafy crown ; 
 Hark ! from their sides a thousand rills 
 
 Come singing sweetly down. 
 
 A thousand rills ; they leap and shine, 
 Strained through the mossy nooks, 
 
102 THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. 
 
 Till, clasped in many a gathering twine, 
 They swell a hundred brooks. 
 
 A hundred brooks, and still they run 
 With ripple, shade, and gleam, 
 
 Till clustering all their braids in one, 
 They flow a single stream. 
 
 A bracelet, spun from mountain mist, 
 
 A silvery sash unwound. 
 With ox-bow curve and sinuous twist, 
 
 It writhes to reach the "Sound." 
 
 This is my bark ; a pigmy's ship ; 
 
 Beneath a child it rolls ; 
 Fear not ; one body makes it dip, 
 
 But not a thousand souls. 
 
 Float we the grassy banks between ; 
 
 Without an oar we glide ; 
 The meadows, sheets of living green, 
 
 Unroll on either side. 
 
 Come, take the book we love so well, 
 And let us read and dream. 
 
 We see whate'er its pages tell 
 And sail an English stream. 
 
 Up to the clouds the lark has sprung, 
 
 Still trilling as he flies ; 
 The linnet sings as there he sung ; 
 
 The unseen cuckoo cries ; 
 
 And daisies strew the banks along. 
 And yellow kingcups shine, 
 
 With cowslips and a primrose throng, 
 And humble celandine. 
 
THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. 103 
 
 Ah, foolish dream ! When Nature nursed 
 
 Her daughter in the West, 
 Europe had drained one fountain first ; 
 
 She bared her other breast. 
 
 On the young planet's orient shore 
 
 Her morning hand she tried ; 
 Then turned the broad medallion o'er 
 
 And stamped the sunset side. 
 
 Take what she gives ; her pine's tall stem, 
 
 Her elm with drooping spray ; 
 She wears her mountain diadem 
 
 Still in her own proud way. 
 
 Look on the forest's ancient kings, 
 
 The hemlock's towering pride ; 
 Yon trunk had twice a hundred rings 
 
 And fell before it died. 
 
 Nor think that Nature saves her bloom 
 
 And slights her new domain ; 
 For us she wears her court costume ; 
 
 Look on its courtly train ! 
 
 The HI}'' with the sprinkled dots, 
 
 Brands of the noontide beam ; 
 The cardinal and the blood-red spots — 
 
 Its double in the stream, 
 
 As if some wounded eagle's breast 
 
 Slow throbbing o'er the plain, 
 Had left its airy path impressed 
 
 In drops of scarlet rain. 
 
 And hark ! and hark ! the woodland rings ; 
 There thrilled the thrush's soul : 
 
104 THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. 
 
 And look ! and look ! those lightning wings — 
 The fire-plumed oriole ! 
 
 Above the hen-hawk swims and swoops, 
 Flung from the bright blue sky ; 
 
 Below, the robin hops, and whoops 
 His little Indian cry. 
 
 The beetle on the wave has brought 
 
 A pattern all his own, 
 Shaped like the razor- breasted yacht 
 
 To England not unknown. 
 
 Beauty runs virgin in the woods, 
 
 Robed in her rustic green, 
 And oft a longing thought intrudes 
 
 As if we nought have seen. 
 
 Her every fingers, every joint. 
 
 Ringed with some golden line ; 
 Poet whom Nature did anoint ! 
 
 Had our young home been thine. 
 
 Yet think not so ; old England's blood 
 
 Runs warm in English veins, 
 But wafted o'er the icy flood 
 
 Its better life remains ; 
 
 Our children know each wild-wood smell, 
 
 The bayberry and the fern ; 
 The man who does not know them well, 
 
 Is all too old to learn. 
 
 Be patient ; Love has long been grown ; 
 
 Ambition waxes strong ; 
 And Heaven is asking time alone 
 
 To mould a child of song. 
 
THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. 105 
 
 When fate draws forth the mystic lot 
 
 The chosen bard that calls, 
 No eye will be upon the spot 
 
 Where the bright token falls. 
 
 Perchance the blue Atlantic's brink. 
 
 The broad Ohio's gleam, 
 Or where the panther stoops to drink 
 
 Of wild Missouri's stream : 
 
 Where winter clasps with glittering ice 
 
 Katahdin's silver chains, 
 Or Georgia's flowery paradise 
 
 Unfolds its blushing plains : 
 
 But know that none of ancient earth 
 
 Can bring the sacred fire ; 
 He drinks the wave of Western birth 
 
 That rules the Western lyre ! 
 
YOUNG LADIES' INSTITUTE POEM. 
 
 Character of the Institute — Visited by John Quincy 
 Adams— Graduating Exercises in 1849 — Speech by 
 Ex-President John Tyler — Speech and Poem by 
 Oliver Wendell Holmes. 
 
 We have already spoken of the Pittsfield, 
 afterward the Maplewood, Young Ladies' In- 
 stitute in connection with the Berkshire Jubilee 
 dinner which was given upon its grounds. It 
 was founded in 1841 by Rev. Wellington H. 
 Tyler, a man of unlimited energy and spirit in 
 his undertaking. In 1849 it had attained an 
 enviable position among American institutions 
 for the higher education of young women, and 
 the addresses, poems, and like exercises at its 
 graduating anniversaries would have done honor 
 to any college commencement day. We are 
 about to speak of these exercises in 1849, when 
 Dr. Holmes took part in them ; but the story of 
 that occasion will derive interest from the re- 
 lation of an incident in the annals of the insti- 
 tution six years before. 
 
 In the summer of 1843 the venerable ex- 
 106 
 
THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. 107 
 
 President John Quincy Adams made a tour 
 through the principal towns of Canada and 
 northern New York, which was a continual 
 series of remarkable ovations in which all classes 
 and all parties united. On his way home, he 
 was formally invited to Pittsfield, where the 
 people of the town gave him a brilliant recep- 
 tion, in the course of which he made several 
 characteristic speeches. At the public dinner 
 he gave this toast: " The hills of Berkshire; the 
 vales of Berkshire; the men of Berkshire; but, 
 above all, the women of Berkshire." 
 
 Then the omnibus in which the young ladies 
 were accustomed to ride conveyed him, with the 
 officers of the day, to the Institute grounds, 
 which had been adorned with rich evergreen 
 arches and other decorations. Having been 
 appropriately welcomed, " he addressed the 
 members of the Institute in the most feeling 
 and happy manner." He said that during the 
 past month he had met with many kind recep- 
 tions and tokens of regard from every rank, 
 party, age, and profession, not only in a neigh- 
 boring State, but in Canada. Yet in all, he had 
 witnessed nothing so gratifying and interesting 
 to him as the scene now before him. So many 
 blooming countenances ! He loved to look upon 
 them — he should be happy to grasp their hands; 
 and their voices, too, he should delight to hear; 
 for these, he doubted not, were full of the 
 
io8 THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. 
 
 sweetest melody. He saw before him those 
 who reminded him of the happiest relations of 
 his life — the relations of wife, mother, sister, 
 daughter, and grand-daughter. It was these 
 very relations that were impelling him this 
 moment on his way, and drawing him with re- 
 sistless power to his home. And, if he seemed 
 to be breaking away from them, it was only 
 that he might meet a wife, a daughter, and a 
 grand-daughter of the same age as many he saw 
 before him. 
 
 Then, after the singing of a hymn and warm 
 hand-grasping, the venerable statesman and 
 the blooming school-girls parted; but with 
 memories of the day that could never fade. 
 
 That was a red-letter day for the Institute; 
 and another like it came six years later. At 
 the graduating exercises of 1849, the report of 
 the examining committee was written and read 
 by Rev. Dr. Henry Neill, of Lenox, an eloquent 
 preacher and the author of some works distin- 
 guished for elegant scholarship, and the address 
 was delivered by Rev. Dr. Brainerd, of New 
 York. 
 
 Among the guests that summer at the Broad- 
 hall boarding-house was ex-President John Ty- 
 ler, who, whatever politicians thought, seemed 
 to enjoy keenly the relief afforded by his trans- 
 fer from a not excessively agreeable official life 
 at Washington to one of ease and independence, 
 
THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. 109 
 
 amid Berkshire scenery in the company of his 
 recently wedded wife: a woman of brilliant 
 wt, much culture, pleasing- manners, and withal 
 evidently devoted to her equally devoted hus- 
 band, who, moreover, did not lack the society of 
 friends whose friendship was to be prized, 
 among his fellow-boarders and others in Berk- 
 shire, including Dr. Holmes. We venture to 
 guess that there were pleasant passages of wit 
 between the great humorist and Mrs. Tyler, 
 who was nothing loath to such encounters. 
 President Tyler attended the anniversary of the 
 Young Ladies' Institute, and, after the more 
 formal exercises, made, in response to the call 
 of the principal, a most genial and pleasing 
 address, from which we quote one paragraph : 
 
 " Is there any expression in language that so 
 thrills the heart-strings as that of our 'mother'? 
 She who gave direction to our early ideas, who 
 first caused us to raise our little hands and eyes 
 in prayer to the throne of the Most High ; and 
 shall her daughters be denied admission to 
 those portals which open to a knowledge of the 
 deep mysteries of nature and science? 1 am most 
 happy to know that those portals are no longer 
 closed, but are broadly and widely opened." 
 
 He then expressed an earnest hope for the 
 success of the Institute and the prosperity of its 
 teachers and trustees. 
 
 The principal, then, with a few compliment- 
 
no THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. 
 
 ary remarks, called upon Dr. Holmes, who re- 
 sponded with the following poem and prefatory 
 remarks: 
 
 " If it were any other place than Pittsfield, and 
 if the occasion were any other than this which 
 has called us together, I should certainly be 
 unwilling to present myself before this audience 
 after the exercises to which we have just lis- 
 tened. But the place has so many claims upon 
 me, connected as it is with my most cherished 
 recollections and my brightest hopes, and the 
 occasion is one so capable of unsealing the lips 
 of the dumb, and kindling light in the eyes of 
 the blind, that I cannot refuse to follow my im- 
 pulse against my judgment. After the inter- 
 esting address which you have heard, the full 
 and most satisfactory report of the committee, 
 and the eloquent remarks of our distinguished 
 visitor, it would ill become me to occupy your 
 time with any attempts at expatiation on those 
 subjects which naturally present themselves, 
 but which have already been so well treated and 
 so vividly illustrated. Let me rather, instead 
 of toiling through an unnecessary series of 
 phrases, and bowing myself out in a finished 
 peroration, have recourse to an artifice under 
 cover of which I have sometimes retreated from 
 dangerous positions, like that which I now 
 occupy. 
 
 " You have heard some allusions made to the 
 
THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. iii 
 
 strains of a music-box, which, if it is wound up, 
 plays out its single tune, and then subsides into 
 mute companionship. There is another kind 
 of music, which, as some think, is occasionally 
 not disagreeable ; and of which I mean to give 
 you a most brief and compendious specim.en. 
 You must not think you are to have a symphony 
 on the organ or a sonata from the piano; one 
 little tinkling tune is all that will be played to 
 you, and then the box will shut up, and you are 
 to say no more about it. 
 
 "I will read you a few lines from a scrap of 
 paper which, as you see, I have kept artfully 
 concealed about my person. 
 
 A Vision of Life. 
 
 The well-known weakness of the rhyming race 
 Is to be ready in and out of place ; 
 No bashful glow, no timid begging off, 
 No sudden hoarseness, no discordant cough 
 (Those coy excuses which your singers plead, 
 When faintly uttering : "No, I can't, indeed") 
 Impedes your rhymester in his prompt career. 
 Give him but hint; and won't the muse appear? 
 
 So, without blushing, when they asked, I came — 
 
 I whom the plough-share, not the quill, should claim — 
 
 The rural nymphs that on my labors smile 
 
 May mend my fence, but cannot mend my style. 
 
 The winged horse disdains my steady team, 
 
 And teeming fancy must forget to dream. 
 
 I harrow fields and not the hearts of men ; 
 
 Pigs, and not poems, claim my humble pen. 
 
112 THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. 
 
 And thus to enter on so new a stage, 
 With the fair critics of this captious age 
 Might lead a sceptic to the rude surmise 
 That cits, turned rustics, are not overwise ; 
 Or the bright verdure of the pastoral scene 
 Had changed my hue, and made me very green. 
 
 A few brief words that, fading as they fall, 
 Like the green garlands of a festal hall. 
 May lend one glow, one breath of fragrance pour, 
 Ere swept ungathered from the silent floor. 
 Such is my offering for your festal day ; 
 These sprigs of rhyme ; this metrical boquet. 
 
 O, my sweet sisters — let me steal the name 
 Nearest to love and most remote from blame — 
 How brief an hour of fellowship ensures 
 The heart's best homage at a shrine like yours. 
 As o'er your band our kindling glances fall. 
 It seems a life-time since I've known you all ! 
 Yet in each face where youthful graces blend 
 Our partial memory still revives a friend ; 
 The forms once loved, the features once adored, 
 In her new picture nature has restored. 
 
 Those golden ringlets, rippling as they flow, 
 We wreathed with blossoms many years ago. 
 Seasons have wasted ; but, remembered yet. 
 There gleams the lily through those braids of jet. 
 Cheeks that have faded worn by slow decay 
 Have caught new blushes from the morning's ray. 
 That simple ribbon, crossed upon the breast, 
 Wakes a poor heart that sobbed itself to rest ; 
 Aye, thus she wore it; tell me not she died. 
 With that fair phantom floating by my side, 
 
THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. 113 
 
 'Tis as of old : why ask the vision's name? 
 All, to the white robe's folding, is the same ; 
 And there, unconscious of a hundred snows, 
 On that white bosom burns the self-same rose. 
 
 Oh, dear illusion, how thy magic power 
 Works with two charms — a maiden and a flower ! 
 Then blame me not if, lost in memory's dream, 
 I cheat your hopes of some expansive theme. 
 
 When the pale star-light fills the evening dim, 
 
 A misty mantle folds our river's brim. 
 
 In those white wreaths, how oft the wanderer sees 
 
 Half real shapes, the playthings of the breeze. 
 
 While every image in the darkening tide 
 
 Fades from its breast, unformed and undescribed. 
 
 Thus, while I stand among your starry train, 
 
 My gathering fancies turn to mist again. 
 
 O'er time's dark wave aerial shadows play, 
 
 But all the living landscape melts away. 
 
VI. 
 
 THE PLOUGHMAN. 
 
 Genesis of the Berkshire Agricultural Society— Elkanah 
 Watson — Major Thomas Melville — John Quincy 
 Adams upon Agricultural Oratory — The Pictur- 
 esque First Cattle Show — How Women Received 
 Their Premiums — About Ploughing Matches — Cattle 
 Shows of 1849 ^^^ 1S51 — Dr. Holmes' Ploughing 
 Match Report— His Poem, The Ploughman. 
 
 The Agricultural vSocieties, of which almost 
 every county in the Union and in Canada 
 boasts at least one, still, as of old, furnish their 
 peoples, in their autumnal cattle-shows and 
 fairs, with gala days strikingly unlike any 
 others. Most of them retain in some good de- 
 gree the quaint provincial features which gave 
 them irresistible attractions for country folk, and 
 a singular charm for those familiar with the 
 wide world's great spectacular festivals. In 
 spite of " improvements" — which, whether they 
 improve or not, do certainly innovate — the fan- 
 dangos, the merry-go-rounds, the rude side- 
 shows, the ruder oyster booths, the sweet-cider 
 barrels, and all that used to delight what "Josh 
 114 
 
THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. 115 
 
 Billings," and other county-wags before him, 
 were wont to call " thekritter-look-krowd," still 
 hold their own pretty well. Still, every fall, 
 more or less competent orators dilate upon the 
 historic, social, and economical aspects of the 
 organizations they address, with more or less 
 knowledge of what they are talking about. 
 The practice of selecting agricultural orators 
 for other reasons than their knowledge of agri- 
 culture has come down to us from the good old 
 times. People, as a mass, always did, and 
 always will, run to see and hear live governors, 
 and live lions of any species. They draw. 
 For draft purposes they easily take the first cat- 
 tle-show premiums even over elephants. John 
 Quincy Adams, however, did not favor their use. 
 In a speech at Pittsfield, he mentioned that he 
 had received several invitations to address ag- 
 ricultural societies, one of them from the " Old 
 Berkshire," asking him to speak at its coming 
 anniversary. " But," said he, " think of my com- 
 ing to Berkshire to teach agriculture ! I am no 
 farmer: why, in all my life, I have not been at 
 home long enough to become a proficient in 
 it, and I believe with "Poor Richard," that 
 
 '"He who by the plough would thrive 
 Himself must either hold or drive. '" 
 
 But then Mr. Adams would have been very 
 likely to disapprove many things now as 
 
it6 the poet among THE HILLS. 
 
 strongly intrenched in popular favor as the 
 Leo-Hunter craze of the agricultural societies 
 is. And the societies continue to flourish in 
 spite of all fault-finding critics. Something, 
 indeed, of the picturesque and poetic coloring 
 that gave beauty to the quaintness of their 
 autumnal gatherings has faded since the times 
 when William CuUen Bryant and Oliver Wen- 
 dell Holmes were among their poets laureate; 
 but not all. They are not yet entirely untinted 
 of their old fascinating hues. This is especially 
 true of the " Ancient and Honorable" Berkshire 
 Agricultural Society — the parent of them all. 
 The dominant peculiarities, which this institu- 
 tion transmitted to all its widespread progeny, 
 were the fruit of much culture and knowledge 
 of the world, gained partly in American cities, 
 but much more largely in Europe; and applied 
 to a secluded but intelligent and ambitious 
 community. Elkanah Watson, the founder of 
 the society, had opportunities in his youth to 
 closely observe men and affairs during the 
 Revolution, and to acquire something of its 
 spirit; but, coming of age in 1779, he went to 
 France, where he was engaged until 1784 in 
 mercantile business that called for extensive 
 travel in that country, as well as in Holland, 
 Belgium, and Great Britain. Returning to 
 America, he made his home in Albany, where, 
 associated with several patriotic and public- 
 
THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. 117 
 
 spirited statesmen in plans for the good of the 
 country, he became particularly interested in 
 their efforts, and those of the New York State 
 Agricultural Society, for the improvement of 
 American wools, — which sadly needed improve- 
 ment — by the importation of the best Span- 
 ish breeds of sheep, purchased in the mar- 
 kets thrown open by the wars of Napoleon. In 
 1807, he removed to Pittsfield, succeeding 
 Henry Van Schaack on the Broadhall estate. 
 Here he remembered what he had seen of festal 
 and oratorical agricultural ^airs in France, and 
 of the less showy solid cattle-shows of England; 
 and also that the New York State Society had 
 recommended county societies and shows. These 
 memories, together with the favorable position 
 he occupied at Pittsfield, naturally inspired him 
 with the idea which culminated four years later 
 — after a world of effort on his part — in the es- 
 tablishment of the Berkshire Society for the Pro- 
 motion of Agriculture and Manufactures. In 
 1814 he was succeeded in its presidency by Maj. 
 Thomas Melville, who, when Mr. Watson re- 
 turned to Albany in 1816, also succeeded him 
 in the Broadhall property. He was an uncle of 
 Herman Melville and son of the Maj. Thomas 
 Melville who was one of the Boston Tea-Party 
 of 1773, and, in his extreme old age, became 
 the original of Dr. Holmes' " Last Leaf." The 
 younger Major Melville passed much of his 
 
ii8 THE POET AA/O.VG THE HILLS. 
 
 early life in France, where he had an interest- 
 ing and romantic experience, and married a 
 lady of family. He returned in season to be 
 made commandant, with the rank of major, of 
 the Pittsfield cantonment, and commissioner 
 for the purchase of army supplies, a position 
 which enabled him to speedily learn much of 
 Berkshire farmers and their husbandry. 
 
 This happy combination, in the first two pres- 
 idents of the Agricultural Society, of practical 
 local knowledge, with tastes cultivated and 
 thoughts quickened by energetic lives and wide 
 observation abroad, all stimulated by patriotism 
 enhanced by the war, together with Mr. Wat- 
 son's inventive imagination and liberal purse, 
 had its natural fruit in a community ordinarily 
 distinguished for plain common sense and 
 homely every-day labors; but which many in- 
 stances show to have been extremely susceptible 
 of incitement to enthusiasm when its love of 
 country was properly appealed to. And a burn- 
 ing desire to free America from dependence 
 upon British looms was a conspicuous, and in- 
 deed the primal, motive of the founders of the 
 Berkshire Society for the promotion of agricul- 
 ture and manufactures. 
 
 Pre-existing associations had exerted them- 
 selves zealously and accomplished something in 
 this direction; but their members were, for the 
 most part, men actively and deeply engaged in 
 
THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. 119 
 
 business, politics, or society. They held their 
 meetings in metropolitan centers and worked, 
 or sought to work, rather upon than among and 
 with the country farmers. Thus they failed 
 to obtain any strong hold upon the popular 
 heart, and accomplished comparatively little in 
 elevating farmers as a class intellectually, so- 
 cially, or even in capacity for their own every- 
 day calling. They created no great holiday 
 for the people, no fellowship in the farmer's 
 craft; and thus they missed the most potent 
 means for raising American husbandry to a 
 higher plane. "They depended," said Mr. 
 Watson, "too much upon type, and did not ad- 
 dress the interest and the sentiment of the 
 people." Their approaches wxre too direct. 
 They sought to influence their humbler fellows 
 almost solely through the cold medium of the 
 press; neglecting appeals to the imagination, 
 to social sentiment, and to that fondness for 
 pageantry which characterized the times. All 
 this the founders of the Berkshire Society re- 
 versed; so molding it that in a few years its 
 example inaugurated a new era in American 
 agricultural life. This it effected through its 
 annual cattle-shows and fairs. 
 
 The cattle-show, which was the germ of a 
 class that has so increased and multiplied that 
 its scions now flourish in every corner of the 
 land, was held, under a call from twenty-six in- 
 
120 THE POET AMONG THE HI I. L Si. 
 
 fluential Berkshire farmers, in 1810, around the 
 tall old elm which then stood in solitary gran- 
 deur on the village green that is now known as 
 the Pittsfield Park. Although this show was 
 little more than a display of cattle and sheep, 
 followed by an address from Mr, Watson, it ex- 
 cited a wide interest, particularly in New Eng- 
 land and New York. At home it created the 
 Berkshire Agricultural Society, under whose 
 auspices and control the second show and fair 
 was held on the last Tuesday and Wednesday 
 of September, 181 1. This is the occasion to 
 which Pittsfield traditions revert with unlimited 
 pride; although some of the features of the 
 show afterward the most popular were not yet 
 introduced. 
 
 Two of Berkshire's most glorious September 
 days blessed the young festival with an atmos- 
 phere at once genial and bracing. An un- 
 clouded but not torrid sun, and foliage not yet 
 tinged with any hectic flush ; all that Nature's 
 ministers can offer in provision for the most 
 unalloyed enjoyment of whatever of pleasure or 
 interest man may prepare for enjoyment. The 
 streets and Park square early took on the lively 
 aspect that subsequent cattle-shows made famil- 
 iar. People from the country round about, in 
 all sorts of vehicles from a "one-horse shay" to 
 a farm-wagon, began, before the rising of the 
 sun, to pour into town, mixed with herds of cat- 
 
THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. 121 
 
 tie, sheep in wagons or in flocks, a few swine, 
 and some mechanical inventions. Immediately 
 around the tall elm, there was an inclosure for 
 the live-stock entered for premium. The re- 
 maining space and the neighboring streets were 
 soon thronged with an excited, expectant crowd : 
 "many of them females," — although the fea- 
 tures which afterward made the festival of spe- 
 cial interest to them were wanting. Booths for 
 the sale of refreshments and Yankee notions 
 had sprung up like mushrooms, after the fash- 
 ion of the then familiar militia muster-fields. 
 The committee had announced that " innocent 
 amusements would be permitted," and enter- 
 prising genius provided a plenty. Chief among 
 them was the fandango, or, as they styled it, 
 the "aerial phaeton," whose dizzy pleasures 
 have never since that day failed the lads and 
 lasses who resort to cattle-shows. Then " the 
 first elephant ever brought to America" gave 
 the country folk their first chance to see " that 
 remarkable creature," except in a cant meta- 
 phorical sense. 
 
 The procedings and pageants of the occasion 
 were all unique and "telling;" but the proces- 
 sion was its crowning glory. Mr. Watson, in 
 his diary, calls it " splendid, novel, and impos- 
 ing beyond anything of the kind ever before 
 exhibited in America." First came the Pitts- 
 field band, whose music is described as inspirit- 
 
122 THE POET AMOXG THE HILLS. 
 
 ing and creditable. Then followed sixty yoke 
 of prime oxen, the oxen being driven and the 
 plow held by the two oldest farmers in the 
 town, whose plowing of its soil dated back to a 
 time when it could only be done side by side 
 with a musket, and under the near protection 
 of log forts which these same old farmers had 
 themselves built. Next came a broad platform 
 drawn by oxen, bearing a broadcloth-hand- 
 loom with a flying shuttle and a spinning- 
 jenny of forty spindles, both machines kept in 
 operation by skillful workmen; one of them, 
 a remarkably fine-looking Englishman, wearing 
 the costume of Dr. Holmes' " Last Leaf," which 
 had even then almost passed from common 
 wear. In this case it was entirely black, but 
 decorated with an abundance of bright-colored 
 ribbons or " favors." The next broad platform 
 was drawn by horses — a prophecy of the coming 
 change in rural motive power. It was in the 
 nature of a triumphal car for what Berkshire 
 had already achieved in manufactures; exhibit- 
 ing rolls of broadcloth, bolts of sail-duck, hand- 
 some rose-blankets, leather, muskets, drums, 
 anchors, and tall clocks like that which then 
 stood in the hall stairwaj of the Gold mansion 
 awaiting the coming of fame. The last divi- 
 sion was composed of the officers and members 
 of the society,. their hats decorated with heads 
 of wheat, and carrying a banner with a plow 
 
THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. 123 
 
 on one side and a sheaf of wheat on the re- 
 verse. 
 
 This display made an impression upon the 
 people of the county which has never been 
 effaced, but has been handed down to this day 
 in the traditions of its old families so vividly 
 that to have heard it in youth at the family fire- 
 side answers very well for a patent of county 
 rank. The report of this cattle-show went far 
 and wide, like that of the Berkshire Jubilee, but 
 it had far more practical and permanent results; 
 which were increased as new attractions were 
 added to the programme of the festival. The first 
 of these additions was effected by inducing the 
 women of the county to take a personal part in 
 the show. Mr. Watson had to exert all his 
 ingenuity, and call in the aid of his wife, to 
 overcome their native shy timidity; but he 
 succeeded, and their display of household manu- 
 factures, fancy articles, dairy products, and the 
 like, always thronged the halls in which they 
 were exhibited with admiring crowds. The 
 quilt that grandmother sent to the show in her 
 young life and the silver bowl that grand- 
 father's choice oxen won him are precious rel- 
 ics in old Berkshire families wherever time 
 may have scattered them. A Virginian letter- 
 writer, in 1822, thus described the scene when 
 the premiums awarded to women were de- 
 livered. 
 
124 THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. 
 
 " The president from the pulpit, immediately 
 after the address, announced: 'As premiums 
 are proclaimed for females they will please rise 
 in their places, and the chief marshal will de- 
 liver to each her premium and certificate of 
 honorable testimony.' The instant the name 
 of the successful candidate was annotmced, the 
 eyes of an exhilarated audience were flying in 
 every direction, impelled by the strongest curi- 
 osity to see the fortunate blushing female, with 
 downcast eyes, raising both her hands, as the 
 marshal approached; with one to receive her 
 premium, with the other her certificate. The 
 effect cannot be described. It must be seen to 
 be realized." 
 
 Strangely enough, the plowing match was 
 not introduced until 1818, when it at once be- 
 came the most exhilarating feature of the festi- 
 val ; receiving, as a competitive exhibition, the 
 attention, and exciting the interest which have 
 since, in a very large degree, been usurped by 
 the then unknown "agricultural horse-trot;" as 
 some think, not greatly to the advantage of 
 agriculture. In the good old plowing-match 
 times, at an appointed hour, the trial took place 
 in a previously announced level and convenient 
 field; to which the whole " kritter-look-krowd" 
 repaired, eager with the liveliest anticipations. 
 And they were never disappointed ; for the con- 
 tests were invariably precisely like that which 
 
THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. 125 
 
 Dr. Holmes has pictured to the life in his poem 
 of " The Ploughman ;" a piece of word-painting 
 as accurate as it is vivid. 
 
 At the first plowing match, the first premium 
 was taken by Major Melville's ploughman ; time, 
 thirty-nine minutes. His competitors declared 
 that his success was due to a superior iron plow 
 which the major had just received from Boston. 
 The curious in such matters may still see it 
 in the historical cabinet of the Berkshire Athe- 
 naeum, and judge its merits for themselves. It 
 looks as though good work might be done with 
 it rapidly. 
 
 Dr. Holmes read his admirable poem, *' The 
 Ploughman," in 1849. In 1852 a description of 
 the cattle-show of 185 1 was published, from 
 which we take a couple of descriptive para- 
 graphs. 
 
 " The festival of all festivals, the two days for 
 which, in the opinion of our rural population, 
 all other days in the round year were made, are 
 those of the cattle-show and fair of the County 
 Agricultural Society. Thanksgiving's grateful 
 rest comes after. This is the shining goal of 
 the year's race. Dreaming of a silver cup, or 
 at least " honorable mention," the farmer tills 
 his soil, tends his flocks and herds, and is care- 
 ful for many things in sunshine and storm. 
 For the same momentous occasion the busy 
 fingers of his wife and daughters are plied, 
 
126 THE POET AMONG THE HILLS, 
 
 while in the dairy, cleanliest receptacles are 
 filled with balls of golden-hued butter and 
 cylinders of odorous cheese. In chambers, 
 too, quaintly variegated needleworks bud and 
 blossom, and snowy webs issue from the antique 
 loom. 
 
 Nor do the taper fingers of more dainty ladies 
 disdain to contend for the silver spoons; while 
 retired gentlemen of fortune take a notable 
 pride in the display of luscious fruits and mam- 
 moth vegetables. 
 
 The village beaux prize the day as an occa- 
 sion for the display of superior gallantry; and 
 the village magnates aspire to the offices in the 
 gift of the society as no small distinctions in 
 themselves, and possibly — pardon the suspicion 
 — as stepping-stones to more substantial honors. 
 Few among us but are at least amateurs in agri- 
 culture; so that when the great festival of Ceres 
 approaches, our mountain Microcosmos is all 
 agog with excitement. The country around is 
 in a ferment of preparation ; now is the harvest 
 of the village tailors; now the paraphernalia of 
 the village belles is cunningly renovated for con- 
 quest. . . . On the bright and beautiful morn- 
 ing of the second day of the fair, we again 
 sallied forth in quest of adventure. The streets 
 were thronged with all sorts of people, seem- 
 ingly like ourselves, with no very definite notion 
 of what they were after: 
 
THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. 127 
 
 " Like a flock of sheep, 
 Not knowing and not caring whither 
 They come or go — so that they fool together." 
 
 My brain is mazed with the memory of that 
 motley crowd. The delegate from Peacham, 
 with gingerbread under one arm and "um- 
 brell" under the other, jostled the gloved and 
 caned exquisite from Broadway; and the trav- 
 eler who could compare this with the great 
 fairs of Europe was favored with the opinion of 
 the youth whose eyes had hardly peeped over 
 the Berkshire Hills — and it may be was wise 
 enough to learn something from it. Here and 
 there, men whose names were known the world 
 over in literature or politics went about — moral- 
 izing, perhaps; or, much more likely, watching 
 that most animating portion of the scene: 
 
 "The lassies with sly eyes, 
 And the smile settling in their sun-flecked cheeks, 
 Like bloom upon the mellow apricot." 
 
 One of these famous people was Dr. Holmes, 
 whom the writer then first saw, as he was lead- 
 ing from booth to booth, and from side-show to 
 side-show, a little boy — very likely, the since 
 gallant captain and learned judge. At the cat- 
 tle-show, two years before this, Dr. Holmes 
 was chairman of the committee on the plow- 
 ing-match, being probably induced to accept 
 that position, and write the poem to which it 
 
 \y 
 
I2S THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. 
 
 led, by his personal friendship for Hon. Ensign 
 H. Kellogg, who was secretary and actuary of 
 the society. 
 
 The oral exercises of the festival were held in 
 the old church of 1 791, in which at two cattle- 
 shows, years before, Bryant had listened to the 
 singing of odes written for them by himself; 
 and which had been the theater of many mem- 
 orable scenes and events. The cattle-show ex- 
 ercises always filled it to its full capacity with 
 such an audience as may be imagined from 
 what has been said. It could not be more than 
 filled on this occasion, but there was a much 
 larger sprinkling than usual of the more culti- 
 vated class ; a hint of the coming treat having 
 passed from mouth to mouth among them. 
 When the report of the plowing-match com- 
 mittee was called for, there was a storm of 
 applause ; Dr. Holmes' Jubilee poem being still 
 fresh in the minds of the people. After grace- 
 fully recognizing it by a bow, he mounted half- 
 way up the old-fashioned high pulpit stairs and, 
 turning to the audience, read his report; of 
 which we give below what is of permanent in- 
 terest, and the poem it introduces; a poem 
 which all critics now class as one of the finest 
 georgics in the whole range of modern poetry; 
 and which some of the best hold to be without 
 a rival. 
 
THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. 129 
 
 Report. 
 
 The committee on the plowing-match are 
 fully sensible of the dignity and importance of 
 the office entrusted to their judgment. To de- 
 cide upon the comparative merits of so many 
 excellent specimens of agricultural art is a most 
 delicate, responsible, and honorable duty. 
 
 The plough is a very ancient implement. It 
 is written in the English language p-1-o-u-g-h, 
 and, by the association of free and independent 
 spellers, p-l-o-w. It may be remarked that the 
 same gentlemen can, by a similar process, turn 
 their coughs into cows; which would be the 
 cheapest mode of raising live stock, although it 
 is to be feared that they (referring to the cows) 
 would prove but low-bred animals. Some have 
 derived the English word plough from the 
 Greek ploiitos^ the wealth which comes from the 
 former suggesting its resemblance to the latter. 
 But such resemblances between different lan- 
 guages may be carried too far: as for example, 
 if a man should trace the name of the Altamaha 
 to the circumstance that the first settlers were 
 all tomahawked on the margin of that river. 
 
 Time and experience have sanctioned the 
 
 custom of putting only plain, practical men 
 
 upon this committee. Were it not so, the most 
 
 awkward blunders would be constantly occur- 
 
 9 
 
I30 THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. 
 
 ring. The inhabitants of our cities, who visit 
 the country during the fine season, would find 
 themselves quite at a loss if an overstrained 
 politeness should place them in this position. 
 Imagine a trader, or a professional man, from 
 the capital of the State, unexpectedly called 
 upon to act in rural matters. Plough -shares are 
 to him shares that pay no dividends. A coulter, 
 he supposes, has something to do with a horse. 
 His notions of stock were obtained in Faneuil 
 Hall market, where the cattle looked funnily 
 enough, to be sure, compared with the living 
 originals. He knows, it is true, that there is a 
 difference in cattle, and would tell you that he 
 prefers the sirloin breed. His children are 
 equally unenlightened; they know no more of 
 the poultry-yard than what they have learned 
 by having the chicken-pox, and playing on a 
 Turkey carpet. Their small knowledge of 
 wool-growing is lam(b)entable. 
 
 The history of one of these summer-visitors 
 shows how imperfect is his rural education. 
 He no sooner establishes himself in the country 
 than he begins a series of experiments. He 
 tries to drain a marsh, but only succeeds in 
 draining his own pockets. He offers to pay for 
 carting off a compost heap; but is informed that 
 it consists of corn and potatoes in an unfinished 
 state. He sows abundantly, but reaps little or 
 nothing, except with the implement which he 
 
THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. 131 
 
 uses in shaving ; a process which is frequently 
 performed for him by other people, though he 
 pays no barber's bill. He builds a wire-fence 
 and paints it green, so that nobody can see it. 
 But he forgets to order a pair of spectacles 
 apiece for his cows, who, taking offense at some- 
 thimg else, take his fence in addition, and make 
 an invisible one of it sure enough. And, finally, 
 having bought a machine to chop fodder, which 
 chops off a good slice of his dividends, and two 
 or three children's fingers, he concludes that, 
 instead of cutting feed, he will cut farming; 
 and so sells out to one of those plain, practical 
 farmers, such as you have honored by placing 
 them on your committee ; whose pockets are not 
 so full when he starts, but have fewer holes and 
 not so many fingers in them. 
 
 It must have been one of these practical men 
 whose love of his pursuits led him to send in to 
 the committee the following lines, which it is 
 hoped will be accepted as a grateful tribute to 
 the noble art whose successful champions are 
 now to be named and rewarded. 
 
 Dr. Holmes then read "The Ploughman." 
 
 The Ploughman. 
 
 Clear the brown path to meet his coulter's gleam ! 
 Lo ! on he comes behind his smoking team. 
 With toil's bright dew-drops on his sunbtirnt brow, 
 The lord of earth, the hero of the plough ! 
 
132 THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. 
 
 First in the field before the reddening sun, 
 
 Last in the shadows when the day is done. 
 
 Line after line, along the bursting sod, 
 
 Marks the broad acres where his feet have trod ; 
 
 Still where he treads, the stubborn clods divide, 
 
 The smooth, fresh furrow opens deep and wide; 
 
 Matted and dense the tangled turf upheaves, 
 
 Mellow and dark the ridgy cornfield cleaves ; 
 
 Up the steep hillside, where the laboring train 
 
 Slants the long track that scores the level plain ; 
 
 Through the moist valley, clogged with oozing cla}', 
 
 The patient convoy breaks its destined way ; 
 
 At every turn the loosening chains resound, 
 
 The swinging ploughshare circles glistening round, 
 
 Till the wide field one billowy waste appears 
 
 And wearied hands unbind the panting steers. 
 
 These are the hands whose sturdy labor brings 
 The peasant's food, the golden pomp of kings; 
 This is the page whose letters shall be seen 
 Changed by the sun to words of living green ; 
 This is the scholar, whose immortal pen 
 Spells the first lesson hunger taught to men ; 
 These are the lines, oh, Heaven-commanded toil. 
 That fill thy deed— thy charter of the soil ! 
 
 O, gracious Mother, whose benignant breast 
 Wakes us to life, and lulls us all to rest, 
 How sweet thy features, kind to every clime. 
 Mock with their smile the wrinkled front of time! 
 We stain thy flowers, — they blossom o'er the dead ; 
 We rend thy bosom, and it gives us bread ; 
 O'er the red field that trampling strife has torn. 
 Waves the green plumage of thy tasselled corn ; 
 Our maddening conflicts scar thy fairest plain, 
 Still thy soft answer is the growing grain. 
 
THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. 133 
 
 Yet, O our Mother, while uncounted charms 
 Round the fresh clasp of thine embracing arms, 
 Let not our virtues in thy love decay, 
 And thy fond sweetness waste our strength away. 
 
 No ! by these hills, whose banners now displayed 
 
 In blazing cohorts Autumn has arrayed ; 
 
 By you twin crests, amid the sinking sphere, 
 
 Last to dissolve and first to reappear; 
 
 By these fair plains the mountain circle screens 
 
 And feeds in silence from its dark ravines, 
 
 True to their homes, these faithful arms shall toil 
 
 To crown with peace their own untainted soil ; 
 
 And true to God, to freedom and rnankind. 
 
 If her chained bandogs Faction shall unbind, 
 
 These stately forms, that bending even now, 
 
 Bowed their strong manhood to the humble plough, 
 
 Shall rise erect, the guardians of the land, 
 
 The same stern iron in the same right hand. 
 
 Till Greylock thunders to the setting sun, 
 
 "The sword has rescued what the ploughshare won." 
 
 The reader familiar with Dr. Holmes' poetry 
 may perhaps observe that some of the lines in 
 the latter part of the above poem vary some- 
 what from the corresponding ones in "The 
 Ploughman" as given in the published collec- 
 tions of the author's works. This is due to the 
 fact that we give the poem as part of his cattle- 
 show report on the plowing match of 1849; and 
 print it as recorded in that connection. But, 
 certainly and without a peradyenture, every 
 reader will observe in the grand poetry of these 
 
134 THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. 
 
 closing lines, the grander prophecy that was 
 grandly fulfilled many years after it was pro- 
 nounced from the pulpit-stairs of the old meet- 
 ing-house of patriotic associations. 
 
VII. 
 
 PITTSFIELD CEMETERY DEDICATION POEM. 
 
 Description of Cemetery Grounds — Previous Burial- 
 Grounds — Dedication Exercises — Rev. Dr. Neill's 
 Address Quoted — Dr. Holmes and Wendell Phillips 
 —The Poem. 
 
 The Pittsfield Rural Cemetery is one of the 
 most beautiful and interesting places of repose 
 for a city's dead. There are few so well fitted 
 to soothe the mourner at his loved one's grave, 
 as this where he finds it amid noble and gently 
 pleasing natural scenery, developed but undis- 
 turbed by art. The visiting stranger also 
 keenly enjoys these beauties, less veiled for 
 him with saddened thought; and with the 
 deeper interest if he is able to invest it with the 
 historic associations that of right belong to it. 
 
 Previous to the year 1850, the encroachments 
 of the living upon the resting-places — or what 
 should have been the resting-places — of Pitts- 
 field's dead, and the consequent removal of 
 their ashes from one burial-ground to another, 
 excited painful and indignant feeling in hearts 
 to which those ashes were endeared by memory ; 
 135 
 
136 THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. 
 
 and sense of a wrong near akin to sacrilege in 
 many others. Circumstances in the early spring 
 of 1850 so intensified this feeling that the town 
 reversed its policy and ordered the purchase of 
 a spacious and every way suitable site for a 
 cemetery, a mile north of its central business 
 square. In April, 1850, this property was con- 
 veyed in trust to a corporation charged with its 
 preparation for the object of its purchase, and 
 with its care and management for that object 
 in perpetuity. 
 
 In an official report of this corporation the 
 grounds which they received are thus described 
 with perfect accuracy : 
 
 " Alternate woods and lawns vary the scene. 
 The irregularity of its surface, now breaking 
 away into gentle inclinations and rounded 
 knolls, adds greatly to its attractions. Fine 
 trees dot the landscape, rural sights meet the 
 eye wherever it is turned. Hidden within the 
 deep shade of the woods, the wanderer is shut 
 out from the world ; but as he emerges upon 
 the uplands, the spires of the village, the quiet 
 homesteads of the valley, and the distant moun- 
 tains break upon him with a beauty almost 
 enrapturing." 
 
 Dr. Horatio Stone, of New York, an artist of 
 well-won national reputation for such work, was 
 engaged to lay out these grounds and transform 
 them from a beautiful natural park to a beauti- 
 
THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. 137 
 
 ful and well-arranged cemetery. Poet and 
 sculptor, his fine taste and peculiar genius 
 made the best possible use of the facilities 
 which nature offered him for making the 
 spot intrusted to him more lovely than he re- 
 ceived it. 
 
 All summer long men and women of taste 
 and feeling cheered and encouraged him by 
 their visits and praises; among them Dr. 
 Holmes, who thus had frequent opportunities to 
 make studies of the superb and varied land- 
 scape for his coming poem. 
 
 As the fall approached, although Dr. Stone's 
 plans had been but incompletely carried out, it 
 was determined to dedicate the cemetery, and 
 open it for use in accordance with an earnest 
 desire of the people who were reluctant to lay 
 their dead in burial-grounds soon to be aban- 
 doned. But, although much remained to be 
 done, much had already been accomplished. 
 Without trenching upon their wild-wood char- 
 acter, the groves had been rounded into grace, 
 and freed from the unsightliness of decay and 
 careless destruction. Man had restored to 
 nature something of the symmetry of which his 
 rude and hasty greed had robbed her. The 
 waters of Onota flowed in a bold and rapid 
 stream across the entrance of the cemetery; 
 but some of them had been trained in a winding 
 brook to a beautiful lawn where they spread 
 
138 THE POET A-MONG THE HILLS. 
 
 into a pretty lakelet, to which Dr. Stone gave 
 the name of St. John, the loving and beloved 
 apostle of Christ; the consoler of the mourner. 
 Miles of roads and paths wound in gentle curves 
 through every part of the grounds; while along 
 their western border one broad, straight avenue 
 was prepared to receive its long vista of trees. 
 Everywhere a beautiful present prophesied the 
 more beautiful future. 
 
 Monday the 9th of September was fixed for the 
 dedication, and even that choice week of all the 
 year in Pittsfield never afforded a more perfect 
 day. The procession which, early in the fore- 
 noon, moved from the park to the cemetery, was 
 heterogeneous, but not in bad taste, as it forc- 
 ibly represented the hold which the noble pub- 
 lic work which called for it had taken upon the 
 hearts of all classes of citizens. A platform for 
 the speakers and the choir had been erected on 
 the northern slope of Chapel Hill, opposite the 
 south shore of the lakelet of St. John. And 
 when the procession arrived, the whole popula- 
 tion of the town seemed to be grouped around 
 it. An elaborate program of exercises had 
 been arranged and was perfectly carried out. 
 It included addresses, prayers, and the singing 
 of appropriate original odes. The dedicatory 
 address was delivered by Rev. Dr. Henry Neill, 
 of Lenox, and consisted chiefly of reasons why 
 living men should institute memorials for the 
 
THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. 139 
 
 dead and make beautiful the spots consecrated 
 to their rest and their memory; the argument 
 being eloquently pressed and illustrated by ex- 
 quisitely told instances from ancient and mod- 
 ern history. We quote the opening passage: 
 
 " Have we been persuaded — an assembly of the 
 living — to look upon the very ground where we 
 may sleep? Impelled by a desire to do honor 
 to the dead, have we come within the precincts 
 of a spot where every shadow seems now to 
 deepen, and where the mountains point signifi- 
 cantly to the skies? The sense of an unpaid 
 tribute has summoned us from our homes. 
 Affection in its reverence and depth of tender- 
 ness has longed to give itself expression in some 
 outward, significant, and permanent form until 
 it can no longer be denied. Out of the hearts 
 of a large community the declaration at length 
 has come, that the remains of departed worth 
 shall hereafter find a safe retreat and pledges 
 of remembrance, foretokening their recompense 
 of a higher reward." 
 
 The dedicatory poem was then read by Dr. 
 Holmes. Nowhere can the poem be so fully 
 understood and enjoyed as here, where it first 
 fell from the lips of its author in the presence 
 of the landscape, and on the occasion, which 
 inspired it. Nor can the varied charms of that 
 landscape be in any other way so adequately 
 appreciated as under the immediate interpreta- 
 
I40 THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. 
 
 tion of the verse which at once described them 
 with the fidelity of a photograph, and gave 
 them a soul with all a great poet's creative 
 power. And yet that verse can never again 
 thrill as it thrilled those who heard it pro- 
 nounced in clear and silvery tones, in the grove 
 on Chapel Hill, that superb and memorable 
 September day of 1850. 
 
 Dr. Holmes is reported to have answered, when 
 he was asked where Wendell Phillips got those 
 marvelous tones that, like magic music, charmed 
 the most hostile audience, that it was " at his 
 mother's knee, " or " in his mother's parlor" ; but 
 those who listened to his own voice , not ringing 
 but flowing through the greenwood arches of 
 Chapel Hill, will believe that the gift to both 
 was from a common ancestry far back of that. 
 There was much that day to give character to 
 the solemn consecration of our cemetery; but 
 the willing and sympathizing genius of Oliver 
 Wendell Holmes embalmed it forever in im- 
 mortal verse. 
 
 Dedicatory Poem. 
 
 Angel of Death ! Extend thy silent reign ! 
 Stretch thy dark sceptre o'er this new domain ! 
 No sable car along the winding road 
 Has borne to earth its unresisting load ; 
 No sudden mound has risen yet to show 
 Where the pale slumberer folds his arms below ; 
 
THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. 141 
 
 No marble gleams to bid his memory live 
 In the brief lines that hurrying Time can give ; 
 Yet, O Destroyer ! From thy shrouded throne 
 Look on our gift ; this realm is all thine own ! 
 Fair is the scene ; its sweetness oft beguiled 
 From their dim paths the children of the wild ; 
 The dark-haired maiden loved its grassy dells, 
 The feathered warrior claimed its wooded swells, 
 Still on its slopes the ploughman's ridges show 
 The pointed flints that left his fatal bow, 
 Chipped with rough art and slow barbarian toil,— 
 Last of his wrecks that strews the alien soil ! 
 Here spread the fields that waved their ripened store 
 Till the brown arms of Labor held no more ; 
 The scythe's broad meadow with its dusky blush ; 
 
 ' The sickle's harvest with its velvet flush ; 
 The green-haired maize, her silken tresses laid. 
 In soft luxuriance, on her harsh brocade ; 
 The gourd that swells beneath her tossing plume ; 
 The coarser wheat that rolls in lakes of bloom,— 
 Its coral stems and milk-white flowers alive 
 With the wide murmurs of the scattered hive ; 
 Here glowed the apple with the pencilled streak 
 Of morning painted on its southern cheek ; 
 The pear's long necklace strung with golden drops, 
 Arched, like the banian, o'er its pillared props; 
 Here crept the growths that paid the laborer's care 
 With the cheap luxuries wealth consents to spare ; 
 Here sprang the healing herbs which could not save 
 
 The hand that reared them from the neighboring 
 grave. 
 
 Yet all its varied charms, forever free 
 From task and tribute. Labor yields to thee ; 
 No more when April sheds her fitful rain 
 The sower's hand shall cast its flying grain ; 
 
142 THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. 
 
 No more when Autumn strews the flaming leaves 
 
 The reaper's band shall gird its yellow sheaves ; 
 
 For thee alike the circling seasons flow 
 
 Till the first blossoms heave the latest snow. 
 
 In the stiff clod below the whirling drifts, 
 
 In the loose soil the springing herbage lifts, 
 
 In the hot dust beneath the parching weeds 
 
 Life's wilting flower shall drop its shrivelled seeds; 
 
 Its germ entranced in thy unbreathing sleep 
 
 Till what thou sowest mightier angels reap ! 
 
 Spirit of Beauty ! Let thy graces blend 
 With loveliest Nature all that Art can lend. 
 Come from the bowers where Summer's life-blood flows 
 Through the red lips of June's half-open rose, 
 Dressed in bright hues, the loving sunshine's dower; 
 For tranquil Nature owns no mourning flower. 
 
 Come from the forest where the beech's screen 
 Bars the fierce noonbeam with its flakes of green ; 
 Stay the rude axe that bares the shadowy plains. 
 Stanch the deep wound that dries the maple's veins. 
 
 Come with the stream whose silver-braided rills 
 Fling their unclasping bracelets from the hills, 
 Till in one gleam, beneath the forest's wings. 
 Melts the white glitter of a hundred springs. 
 
 Come from the steeps where look majestic forth 
 From their twin thrones the Giants of the North 
 On the huge shapes that crouching at their knees. 
 Stretch their broad shoulders, rough with shaggy trees. 
 Through the wide waste of ether, not in vain 
 Their softened gaze shall reach our distant plain ; 
 There, while the mourner turns his aching eyes 
 On the blue mounds that print the bluer skies, 
 Nature shall whisper that the fading view 
 Of mightiest grief may wear a heavenly hue. 
 
THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. 143 
 
 Cherub of Wisdom ! Let thy marble page 
 Leave its sad lesson, new to every age ; 
 Teach us to live, not grudging every breath 
 To the chill winds that waft us on to death. 
 But ruling calmly every pulse it warms 
 And tempering gently every word it forms. 
 
 Seraph of Love ! In Heaven's adoring zone 
 Nearest of all around the central throne. 
 While with soft hands the pillowed turf we spread 
 That soon shall hold us in its dreamless bed. 
 With the low whisper — Who shall first be laid 
 In the dark chamber's yet unbroken shade? — 
 Let thy sweet radiance shine rekindled here. 
 And all we cherish grow more truly dear. 
 Here in the gates of Death's o'erhanging vault, 
 Oh, teach us kindness for our brother's fault ; 
 Lay all our wrongs beneath this peaceful sod 
 And lead our hearts to Mercy and its God. 
 
 Father of all ! In Death's relentless claim 
 We read thy mercy by its sterner name ; 
 In the bright flower that decks the solemn bier 
 We see thy glory in its narrowed sphere ; 
 In the deep lessons that affliction draws 
 We trace the curves of thy encircling laws ; 
 In the long sigh that sets our spirits free 
 We own the love that calls us back to thee ! 
 
 Through the hushed street, along the silent plain 
 The spectral future leads its mourning train, 
 Dark with the shadows of uncounted bands. 
 Where man's white lips and woman's wringing hands 
 Track the still burden, rolling slow before. 
 That love and kindness can protect no more ; 
 The smiling babe that, called to mortal strife. 
 Shuts its meek eyes and drops its little life ; 
 
144 THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. 
 
 The drooping child that prays in vain to live, 
 And pleads for help its parent cannot give ; 
 The pride of beauty stricken in its flower ; 
 The strength of manhood broken in an hour; 
 Age in its weakness, bowed by toil and care, 
 Traced in sad lines beneath its silvered hair. 
 
 The sun shall set, and heaven's resplendent spheres 
 Gild the smooth turf unhallowed yet by tears, 
 But ah, how soon the evening stars will shed 
 Their sleepless light around the slumbering dead ! 
 
 Take them, O Father, in immortal trust! 
 Ashes to ashes, dust to kindred dust. 
 Till the last angel rolls the stone away 
 And a new morning brings eternal day ! 
 
VIII. 
 
 THE NEW EDEN. 
 
 How the Poem Was Written. 
 
 There is a curious story connected with the 
 writing of "The New Eden." The Berkshire 
 Horticultural Society had a very pleasant anni- 
 versary dinner at Stock bridge, September 13, 
 1854, which was attended by persons of nice 
 tastes from all parts of the county. Among 
 them was Hon. Edward A. Newton, of Pittsfield, 
 a gentleman of rare, varied, and fastidious cul- 
 ture. On his return, Mr. Newton, meeting a 
 local editor, extolled without measure a poem 
 which Dr. Holmes had read at the dinner, and 
 urged the editor to procure it for publication ; 
 and he accordingly asked for it, although, know- 
 ing the money value of Dr. Holmes' verse, he 
 had great doubts about obtaining it. But the 
 poet, with his usual kindness — aided perhaps 
 by a good word from his friend, Mr. Newton — 
 readily consented to furnish the copy on three 
 conditions: that he should have as many proofs 
 and make as many alterations as he might 
 please, and that, when the poem was ready, he 
 10 145 
 
146 THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. 
 
 should have a hundred copies handsomely 
 printed on commercial note-paper. These 
 terms would have been but trifling for the least 
 considerable poem from Dr. Holmes' pen. 
 They were eagerly accepted. He had sixteen 
 proofs, and made so many alterations and ad- 
 ditions that the completed poem — " The New 
 Eden" — was more than double the length of that 
 read at Stockbridge; while the slight infusion 
 of humor that flavored it for the dinner-table 
 had entirely disappeared. 
 
 It is only necessar}^ to add by way of explana- 
 tion, that in the summer of 1854 Berkshire 
 County suffered from one of the most severe 
 and prolonged droughts it ever knew. The poem 
 portrays it with its author's invariable fidelity 
 to Nature. 
 
 The New Eden. 
 
 Scarce could the parting ocean close, 
 
 Seamed by the Mayflower's cleaving bow, 
 
 When o'er the rugged desert rose 
 
 The waves that tracked the Pilgrim's plough. 
 
 Then sprang from many a rock-strewn field 
 The rippling grass, the nodding grain, 
 
 Such growths as English meadows yield 
 To scanty sun and frequent rain. 
 
 But when the fiery days were done, 
 And Autumn brought his purple haze, 
 
 Then, kindling in the slanted sun, 
 
 The hill-sides gleamed with golden maize. 
 
THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. 147 
 
 Nor treat his homely gift with scorn 
 Whose fading memory scarce can save 
 
 The hillocks where he sowed his corn, 
 The mounds that mark his nameless grave. 
 
 The food was scant, the fruits were few : 
 A red streak glistened here and there ; 
 
 Perchance in statelier precincts grew 
 Some stern old Puritanic pear. 
 
 Austere in taste, and tough at core 
 
 Its unrelenting bulk was shed. 
 To ripen in the Pilgrim's store 
 
 When all the summer sweets were fled. 
 
 Such was his lot, to front the storm 
 
 With iron heart and marble brow, 
 Nor ripen till his earthly form 
 
 Was cast from life's Autumnal bough. 
 
 But ever on the bleakest rock 
 
 We bid the brightest beacon glow 
 And still upon the thorniest stock 
 
 The sweetest roses love to blow. 
 
 So on our rude and wintry soil 
 
 We feed the kindling flame of art, 
 And steal the tropic's blushing spoil 
 
 To bloom on Nature's icy heart. 
 
 See how the softening Mother's breast 
 Warms to her children's patient wiles, — 
 
 Her lips by loving Labor pressed 
 Break in a thousand dimpling smiles, 
 
 From when the flushing bud of June 
 Dawns with its first auroral hue, 
 
148 THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. 
 
 Till shines the rounded harvest moon, 
 And velvet dahlias drink the dew. 
 
 Nor these the only gifts she brings ; 
 
 Look where the laboring orchard groans, 
 And yields its beryl- threaded strings 
 
 For chestnut burs and hemlock cones. 
 
 Dear though the shadowy maple be, 
 And dearer still the whispering pine, 
 
 Dearest yon russet-laden tree 
 Browned by the heavy rubbing kine ! 
 
 There childhood flung its venturous stone, 
 And boyhood tried its daring climb, 
 
 And though our summer birds have flown 
 It blooms as in the olden time. 
 
 Nor be the Fleming's pride forgot. 
 
 With swinging drops and drooping bells. 
 
 Freckled and splashed with streak and spot, 
 On the warm -breasted, sloping swells; 
 
 Nor Persia's painted garden-queen, — 
 Frail Houri of the trellised wall, — 
 
 Her deep-cleft bosom scarfed with green, — 
 Fairest to see, and first to fall. 
 
 "When man provoked his mortal doom. 
 And Eden trembled as he fell, 
 
 When blossoms sighed their last perfume, 
 And branches waved their long farewell, 
 
 One sucker crept beneath the gate. 
 One seed was wafted o'er the wall. 
 
 One bough sustained his trembling weight ; 
 These left the garden— these were all. 
 
THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. 149 
 
 And far o'er many a distant zone 
 These wrecks of Eden still are flung : 
 
 The fruits that Paradise hath known 
 Are still in earthly gardens hung. 
 
 Yes, by our own unstoried stream 
 The pink-white apple-blossoms burst 
 
 That saw the young Euphrates gleam — 
 That Gihon's circling waters nursed. 
 
 For us the ambrosial pear displays 
 The wealth its arching branches hold, 
 
 Bathed by a hundred summery days 
 In floods of mingling fire and gold. 
 
 And here, where beauty's cheek of flame 
 With morning's earliest beam is fed, 
 
 The sunset-painted peach may claim 
 To rival its celestial red. 
 
 What though in some unmoistened vale 
 The summer leaf grow brown and sere, 
 
 Say, shall our star of promise fail 
 That circles half the rolling sphere. 
 
 From beaches salt with bitter spray 
 
 O'er prairies green with softest rain 
 And ridges bright with evening's ray 
 
 To rocks that shade the stormless main? 
 
 If by our slender-threaded streams 
 
 The blade and leaf and blossom die. 
 If drained by noon-tide's parching beams 
 
 The milky veins of Nature dry, 
 
 See with her swelling bosom bare 
 Yon wild-eyed Sister in the West, — 
 
150 THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. 
 
 The ring of Empire round her hair, — 
 The Indian's wampum on her breast! 
 
 We saw the August sun descend 
 Day after day with blood-red stain, 
 
 And the blue mountains dimly blend 
 
 With smoke-wreaths from the burning plain 
 
 Beneath the hot Sirocco's wings 
 We sat and told the withering hours, 
 
 Till Heaven unsealed its azure springs, 
 And bade them leap in flashing showers. 
 
 Yet in our Ishmael's thirst we knew 
 The mercy of the Sovereign hand 
 
 Would pour the fountain's quickening dew 
 To feed some harvest of the land. 
 
 No flaming swords of wrath surround 
 Our second Garden of the Blest ; 
 
 It spreads beyond its rocky bound 
 It climbs Nevada's glittering crest. 
 
 God keep the tempter from its gate I 
 God shield the children, lest they fall 
 
 From their stern fathers' free estate, 
 Till Ocean is its only wall ! 
 
IX. 
 
 Poems for Ladies' Fair. 
 
 St. Stephen's Church Fair — A Lady's Raid on Dr. 
 Holmes' Poetical Preserves — Camilla — Portia's 
 Leaden Casket— What a Dollar Will Buy. 
 
 During his Pittsfield residence, Dr. Holmes 
 was a constant attendant on St. Stephen's 
 Church ; and he took a genuine interest in the 
 prosperity of the parish as it was indicated by 
 the enlargement and improvement of its neat 
 little gray-stone Gothic edifice — an interest 
 that continued through life, as was pleasantly 
 shown in a letter of 1893, warmly congratulat- 
 ing his long-time friend, Rev. Dr. Newton, the 
 rector in that year, upon the completion of the 
 large and beautiful church then just erected. 
 Among other touching memories, it recalled 
 the writer's attendance in the old church, to 
 whose building he made a curious contribution, 
 that is now to be described here. In 1855, St. 
 Stephen's parishioners were even more than 
 usually zealous. The ladies, as ever, were fore- 
 most in their zeal ; and they made extraordinary 
 preparations for a fair that is still brilliant in 
 151 
 
152 THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. 
 
 local society tradition. In their councils, they 
 cast longing eyes toward the villa by the Housa- 
 tonic. They had even the temerity to solicit a 
 contribution from its master — not from his 
 purse or his garden, which were open enough, 
 but from his pen : something for the fair " post- 
 office. " He happened to be at the moment so 
 pressed for time that he was compelled to plead 
 preoccupation. 
 
 The committee were in despair. But Broad- 
 hall was then the home of Mr. and Mrs. J. R. 
 Morewood; both among the most devoted St. 
 Stephen's parishioners. Mrs Morewood had 
 too wide acquaintance with literary lions to be 
 daunted even by one so formidable as Dr. 
 Holmes,— who did not become "Autocratic" 
 until two years later. Perhaps, too, the lady 
 had an inkling that his kind heart, and their 
 common love for St. Stephen's would aid her 
 pleading. At any rate, when she heard of the 
 committee's disappointment she at once mounted 
 her horse and, with a single aid-de-camp, dashed 
 off to the villa by the Housatonic. There she 
 presented her petition, and it almost goes with- 
 out saying that it was granted by the promise 
 of two poems for the post-office. Dr. Holmes, 
 of course, escorted his fair besieger to the door ; 
 and in assisting her to remount her horse, being 
 perhaps poetically nervous, he did not calculate 
 with precise accuracy the amount of force neces- 
 
THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. 153 
 
 sary to place her gracefully in her seat. The 
 saddle was, however, gained without a fall. 
 But the poet, busy as he was, did not forget 
 the incident, and when the fair postmistress 
 received the two poems promised for her mail, 
 there came also one for Mrs. Morewood, which 
 described it with his never-failing grace, wit, 
 and accuracy. We present it here. 
 
 Camilla. 
 
 The gray robe trailing round her feet, 
 
 She smiled and took the slippered stirrup 
 (A smile as sparkling, rosy, sweet, 
 
 As soda, drawn with strawberry syrup) ; — 
 Now, gallant, now ! be strong and calm, — 
 
 The graceful toilet is completed, — 
 Her foot is in thy hollowed palm — 
 
 One little spring, and she is seated ! 
 
 No foot-print on the grass was seen, 
 
 The clover hardly bent beneath her, 
 I knew not if she pressed the green, 
 
 Or floated over it in ether ; 
 Why, such an airy, fairy thing 
 
 Should carry ballast in her pocket, — 
 God bless me ! If I help her spring 
 
 She'll shoot up heavenward like a rocket. 
 
 Ah, fatal doubt ! The sleepless power 
 That chains the orbs of light together, 
 
 Bends on its stem the slenderest flower 
 That lifts its plume from turf or heather; 
 
154 THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. 
 
 Clasp, lady, clasp the bridle rein 1 
 The filly stands— hold hard upon her ! 
 
 Twine fast those fingers in her mane, 
 Or all is lost— excepting honor ! 
 
 Earth stretched his arms to snatch his prize, 
 
 The fairies shouted "Stand from under!" 
 The violets shut their purple eyes, 
 
 The naked daisies stared in wonder ; 
 One moment. Seated in her pride. 
 
 Those arms shall try in vain to win her; 
 "Earth claims her not," the fairies cried, 
 
 "She has so little of it in her !" 
 
 The lady's raid on his poetic preserves, with 
 its closing incident, reminded her classic host of 
 Diana's light-footed messenger, Camilla, and 
 probably of Pope's old familiar lines: 
 
 "When swift Camilla scours along the plain. 
 Flies o'er the unbending corn, and skims along the 
 main." 
 
 The two other poems were inclosed in en- 
 velopes, inscribed with mottoes. These were 
 disposed of in a raffle, the winner of the first 
 prize selecting that of the two poems which 
 pleased him, from the motto on the envelope. 
 
 Portia's Leaden Casket. 
 
 Mrs. Ensign H. Kellogg drew the first prize 
 and selected the envelope inscribed with the 
 following 
 
THE POET AMONG THE HILLS, 155 
 
 Faith is the conquering Angel's crown ; 
 
 Who hopes for grace must ask it ; 
 Look shrewdly ere you lay me down ; 
 
 I'm Portia's leaden casket. 
 
 The following verses were found within: 
 
 Fair lady, whosoe'er thou art, 
 Turn this poor leaf with tenderest care 
 
 And— hush, O hush thy beating heart— 
 The One thou lovest will be there ! 
 
 Alas ! not loved by thee alone, 
 
 Thine idol, ever prone to range ; 
 To-day, all thine, to-morrow flown, 
 
 Frail thing that every hour may change. 
 
 Yet, when that truant course is done, 
 
 If thy lost wanderer reappear, 
 Press to thy heart the only One 
 
 That nought can make more truly dear ! 
 
 Within this note was a slip of paper, with the 
 following verses, inclosing a one dollar bill : 
 
 Fair lady, lift thine eyes and tell 
 
 If this is not a truthful letter. 
 This is the one (i) thou lovest well 
 
 And nought (o) can make thee love it better (10) . 
 
 Though fickle, do not think it strange 
 That such a friend is worth possessing, 
 
 For one that gold can never change. 
 Is Heaven's own dearest earthly blessing. 
 
156 THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. 
 
 What a Dollar Will Buy. 
 
 The second prize fell to Col. George S. Willis. 
 The following was the 
 
 If man, or boy, or dolt, or scholar 
 Will break this seal, he pays his dollar; 
 But if he reads a single minute. 
 He'll find a dollar' s worth within it. 
 
 A dollar's worth. 
 
 Listen to me and I will try 
 
 To tell you what a dollar will buy. 
 
 A dollar will buy a Voter's conscience. 
 
 Or a book of " Fiftieth thousand" nonsense ; 
 
 Or a ticket to hear a Prima Donna, 
 
 Or a fractional part of a statesman's honor ; 
 
 It will buy a tree to sit in the shade of, 
 Or half the cotton a tournure' s made of. 
 
 It will buy a glass of rum or gin 
 
 At a Deacon's store or a Temperance inn. 
 
 (The Deacon will show you how to mix it. 
 Or the Temperance Landlord stay and fix it.) 
 
 It will buy a painting at Burbank's hall 
 
 That will frighten the spiders from off the wall ; 
 
 Or a dozen teaspoons of medium size. 
 That will do for an Agricultural prize. 
 
THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. 157 
 
 It will buy four tickets to Barnum's show — 
 
 (Late firm of Pharaoh, Herod & Co.) 
 
 Or get you a paper that brings b}' mail 
 
 Its weekly "Original thrilling tale" — 
 
 Of which the essential striking plot 
 
 Is a daddy that's rich and a youth that's not, 
 
 Who seeking in vain for Papa's consent, 
 
 Runs off with his daughter— the poor old gent ! 
 
 The Governor's savage ; at last relents 
 
 And leaves them a million in cash and rents. 
 
 Or a Hair-wash, patent, and warranted too, 
 
 That will turn your whiskers from gra)^ to blue. 
 
 And dye old three-score as good as new ; 
 
 So that your wife will open her eyes 
 
 And treat you with coolness, and then surprise. 
 
 And at last, as you're sidling up to her. 
 
 Cry "I'll call my husband, you saucy cur!" 
 
 Or a monochrome landscape, done in an hour, 
 That looks like a ceiling stained in a shower ; 
 
 Or a ride to Lenox through mire and clay. 
 Where you may see, through the livelong day, 
 Scores of women with couples of men 
 Trudging up hill — and down again. 
 
 This is what a dollar will do, 
 
 With many things as strange but true ; 
 
 This very dollar I've got from you— 
 
 P. S. We shouldn't mind if you made it two. 
 
 Two or three of the hits in "A Dollar's 
 Worth" do not fit quite so well as they did in 
 1855. Time has wrought many changes in 
 forty years: but none to affect the victims of 
 
158 THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. 
 
 these verses so seriously that the reader cannot 
 find somewhere some application for their wit. 
 
 The allusion to the paintings in Burbank's 
 Hall is so local and dates so far back that it 
 requires a little explanation. This hall, the 
 largest in Pittsfield for years, was a very plain 
 affair; but, on account of its size, it was used 
 for all the purposes wliich, in a thriving New 
 England village, call for such an audience-room. 
 All the great lyceum orators of the day, includ- 
 ing Dr. Holmes himself, spoke from its plat- 
 form ; and Fanny Kemble read Shakespeare on 
 it to a thousand people. One day a hundred or 
 more of the vilest daubs that ever pretended to 
 be paintings were brought to it to be sold. It 
 is a credit to Pittsfield that nobody would buy 
 them, even for the value of their frames. Mr. 
 Burbank, therefore, took the lot for his rent; 
 and in 1855 they hung on the walls as a relief, 
 if not an ornament, to their barrenness. What 
 finally became of them we do not know. Per- 
 haps they were in the wreck, when the hall itself 
 crashed down tmder a weight of snow in 1861. 
 
 The sale of the two poems sent by Dr. Holmes 
 to the Fair added twenty-five dollars to its re- 
 ceipts, which were applied to the cost of re- 
 modeling the church; so that the St. Stephen's 
 of that time was the third Pittsfield house of 
 worship to whose building the descendants of 
 Col. Jacob Wendell contributed. 
 
X. 
 
 L' ENVOI. 
 
 The Mountains and the Sea— Presentation from Dr. 
 Holmes' Library to the Berkshire Athenaeum— 
 Hawthorne's Desk— Pittsfield Characters in Dr. 
 Holmes' Novels— Good-By, Old Folks! 
 
 If a multitude of witnesses will serve, all 
 that the earlier pages of this volume advanced 
 relative to the kindly feeling of Oliver Wendell 
 Holmes for the mountain county of the Bay 
 State, and particularly for the town of his sum- 
 mer home, has been made good; however im- 
 perfectly • the argument founded upon their 
 evidence may have been presented. 
 
 Still we may be permitted to add a few more 
 words of similar import. And, again, they are 
 mostly his own; being part of a Breakfast- 
 Table Talk. 
 
 " I have lived by the sea-shore and by the 
 moimtains. No, I am not going to say which 
 I like best. The one where your place is, is 
 the best for you. But this difference there is: 
 you can domesticate the mountain, but the sea 
 is fe7'CE natiirce. You may have a hut or know 
 the owner of one, on the mountain-side; you 
 159 
 
i6o THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. 
 
 see a light half-way up its ascent in the even- 
 ing, and you know there is a home, and you 
 might share it. You have noted certain trees, 
 perhaps. You know the particular zone, where 
 the hemlocks look so black in October when the 
 maples and beeches have faded. All its reliefs 
 and intaglios have electrotyped themselves in 
 the medallions that hang round the walls of 
 your memory's chamber. The sea remembers 
 nothing. It is feline. It licks your feet; its 
 huge flanks purr very pleasantly for you ; but it 
 will crack your bones, and eat you, for all that; 
 and wipe the crimsoned foam from its jaws as 
 though nothing had happened. The mountains 
 give their lost children berries and water. The 
 sea mocks their thirst and lets them die. The 
 mountains have a grand, stupid, lovable tran- 
 quillity. The sea has a fascinating, treachejous 
 intelligence. The mountains lie about us like 
 huge ruminants, their broad backs awful to look 
 upon, but safe to handle. The sea smooths its 
 silver scales until you cannot see their joints; 
 but their shining is that of a snake's belly, after 
 all. In deeper suggestiveness, I find as great 
 a difference. The mountains dwarf mankind, 
 and foreshorten the procession of its long gen- 
 erations. The sea drowns out humanity and 
 time; it has no sympathy with either, for it 
 belongs to eternity; and of that it sings its 
 monotonou's song for ever and ever. " 
 
THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. i6i 
 
 It was quite unnecessary for the writer of 
 these words to state in set terms whether he 
 loved best the mountains or the seaside. What 
 we can domesticate, we love; what is foreign 
 to our homes is very likely to be foreign to our 
 hearts. To be sure, Longfellow preferred the 
 seaside. He was born and passed his youth in 
 one of the most delightful cities by the sea: in 
 his own words : 
 
 "The beautiful town 
 That is seated by the sea. " 
 
 The mountain air made him drowsy, so that 
 on some Pittsfield days he could not get on at 
 all with Kavanagh ; which goes to confirm Dr. 
 Plolmes' liberal comment on the choice of a 
 summer home; "the one where your place is, 
 is the best for you.". . . "You must cut your 
 climate to your constitution as much as much 
 as your clothing to your shape. After this con- 
 sult your taste and convenience. But if you 
 would be happy in Berkshire you must carry 
 mountains in your brain; and if you would 
 enjoy Nahant you must have an ocean in your 
 soul. Nature plays at dominos with you ; you 
 must match her piece or she will never give it 
 up to you. " 
 
 You will find more of this in the "Autocrat." 
 Wonderful book that "Autocrat." More in it 
 of the philosophy of the material, moral, intel- 
 
 XI 
 
i62 THE POET AMONG THE HILLS, 
 
 lectual, and spiritual universe, done up in a 
 multitude of small packages, than are spread 
 out over page upoi:i page of a dozen ordinary 
 books of great pretense. Whatever your case 
 may be the Autocrat has a prescription for it. 
 
 Some of the paragraphs we have quoted ex- 
 plain in the Autocrat's own poetic, philosophic 
 way the elements in the mountains, ever con- 
 stant in form, ever varying in aspect, which 
 give the regions they dominate a definite in- 
 dividuality, that fixes them in the memory of 
 their children, to whom it doubly endears them. 
 
 While the present volume has been preparing, 
 Pittsfield has received an unexpected, but per- 
 fectly natural and exceedingly welcome, testi- 
 monial to Dr. Holmes' remembered friendship. 
 His son and namesake, Judge Holmes, found 
 in the library left by him more than a thousand 
 volumes; some of them duplicates of books 
 already owned by himself, but mostly works — 
 many of rare and curious value — better suited to 
 the shelves of a public institution or of a writer 
 upon such varied and often abstruse themes as 
 Dr Holmes treated, than to those of one ab- 
 sorbed in intellectual pursuits of a different 
 class; where they might long lie hidden and 
 unused, while students were craving in vain the 
 aid which they could give to their investiga- 
 tions. Judge Holmes did not wish this disuse, 
 which would amount to a misuse, of the treas- 
 
THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. 163 
 
 ures which had fallen to him. Still less could 
 he think of making merchandise of what had 
 come to him from such a source. Remember- 
 ing his father's old kindness for Pittsfield, and 
 doubtless inheriting something of it, he there- 
 fore presented them to the Berkshire Athe- 
 naeum, where they will long and conspicuously 
 bear witness to the affection of the great author 
 who once owned and enjoyed them for the town 
 to which he was bound by many and varied 
 ties. 
 
 This Athenaeum is the " outward and visible 
 manifestation" of what is best in intellectual 
 Pittsfield. Its libraries, cabinets, and galleries 
 are particularly rich in mementos of men dis- 
 tinguished in the higher fields of thought and 
 action. Hitherto the most highly prized of 
 these memorials, at least among those of men 
 of letters, has been the desk upon which Haw- 
 thorne wrote his earlier and greatest novels. 
 It is a plain but handsome piece of furniture; 
 of solid mahogany ; not large, but one can see, 
 that, with its capacious lower drawers, a deal 
 of hard literary work could be done upon it 
 conveniently and comfortably. It looks as 
 though it might very well have come from old 
 Salem, and been the work-bench of a man like 
 Hawthorne. The long and yearly increasing 
 train of men and women who seek it as a shrine 
 of genius is a pleasing testimony to the growth 
 
1 64 THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. 
 
 of the sentiment which prompts loving and ad- 
 miring homage before it. It has long been the 
 object first sought by visitors to the Athenaeum 
 of this class; although it might almost — not 
 quite — have been said that it was only primus 
 inter pares. But when the Holmes presentation 
 shall have been arranged in the alcove to be 
 prepared for it, the desk must be prepared to 
 divide its honors with the books. 
 
 And this reminds us that, for the summer 
 visitor to Berkshire the Athenaeum is a capital 
 supplement to its natural scenery. When a 
 rainy day spoils his planned excursion in its 
 fields and woods to some romantic spot, or his 
 climbing for a grand view, it need not involve 
 ennui in its cloudy hours; for they may be most 
 agreeably spent in the enjoyment of the Athe- 
 naeum's gathered treasures of art, nature, his- 
 toric relics, and literature. Sometimes this 
 affords a pleasing relief to the monotony of out- 
 door sight-seeing; and it always gives a keener 
 relish for, and better understanding of, the 
 landscapes afterward seen. 
 
 Our attention has just been called to another 
 and very striking illustration of the enduring 
 nature of Dr. Holmes' affection for his old own 
 Berkshire home. It is contained in a letter to 
 a very old and valued personal and literary 
 friend, written as late as January 24, 1894. 
 And it is worthy of remark that its three closely 
 
THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. 165 
 
 filled pages were written by himself in his neat, 
 firm penmanship, when most of his correspond- 
 ence was carried on through his secretary. We 
 can quote only a few sentences ; but they are 
 full of significance. 
 
 " Oh, how I should love to look on Pittsfield 
 again ! And yet 1 have always dreaded the 
 rush of memories it would bring over me, and 
 dread it still. But there lie buried many of my 
 dearest and sweetest memories of my earlier 
 middle age ; and, if I cannot look on Greylock 
 and Pontoosuc with these eyes which are fast 
 growing dim, I can recall them with infinite 
 affection and delight." 
 
 The poems collected in this little volume are 
 far from the only ones that Dr. Holmes wrote 
 in his seven Pittsfield summers. We have only 
 taken those which have a decided Berkshire 
 flavor. But there was an incident in the writ- 
 ing of one of the others — the "Astrea," if we 
 remember rightly— which, though not unusual 
 in the operation of busy minds, may be of in- 
 structive interest to some young writer. He 
 had written one morning some thirty lines with 
 more than his usual ease and rapidity. Then he 
 " wrestled" long with a single couplet, of which 
 he had a clear idea, but could not suit himself 
 with the rhythm. The entrance of a casual visi- 
 tor broke the "jam" of thought. The couplet 
 was completed in a twinkling, and with a shout. 
 
i66 THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. 
 
 " Dr. Holmes made some pretty close studies, 
 for use in his novels, of scenes and events which 
 came under his eye in Pittsfield, and of the peo- 
 ple who took part in them. Are you going to 
 tell about those scenes and events and point out 
 the originals of his characters?" No, inquiring 
 friend. Very decidedly we are not going to do 
 anything of the kind. Dr. Holmes certainly 
 did witness some striking scenes here, ludicrous 
 as well as otherwise; and he did depict them 
 with a fidelity to nature that makes one suspect 
 that he inherited the talents of some old Dutch 
 artist far back in the Wendell genealogy. And 
 he did make some portraits from life with like 
 accurate truthfulness; so that an observant 
 townsman, coming across one of these char- 
 acters in his book, would be very apt to ex- 
 claim: "Why that is Mr. X, or old X, to a 
 dot." And yet it might be that the novelist's 
 character was given a birth-mark or a scar that 
 did not disfigure the countenance of Mr. X. 
 Novelists select and combine traits for their 
 characters, just as the old Greek sculptor selected 
 and combined the beauties of many beautiful 
 women to form the most beautiful, and the 
 representative of the goddess of beauty; only 
 that it is not always beautiful traits that the 
 novelist selects. Doubtless in the sculptor's 
 work the beauty contributed by one model was 
 so recognizable that in common report she re- 
 
THE POET AMONG THE HILLS, 167 
 
 ceived credit for all ; and so with the originals 
 from whom the novelist draws his characters; 
 he whose most salient features most nearly cor- 
 respond with the salient features of the man in 
 the novel is held responsible for all the ugli- 
 nesses with which the author may see fit to in- 
 vest him; so that Mr. X may be wrongfully 
 deformed with the humped back which properly 
 belongs to Mr. Y. 
 
 There is yet another reason why it is par- 
 ticularly safe for us to refrain from attempt- 
 ing to identify the Pittsfield characters in Dr. 
 Holmes' novels. While in his Berkshire verse 
 there is as little harshness of thought as of 
 rhythmical cadences, and while it is as void of 
 censure as the sky is of clouds on the most per- 
 fect Berkshire day in June or September, there 
 was in him abundant electricity; latent until 
 it was needed for the purification of a moral 
 atmosphere. Tolerant as his charitable philos- 
 ophy was of the common frailties and errors of 
 humanity, from the bottom of his heart he hated 
 shams, hypocrisy, and the oppression of the 
 helpless; and he lashed them without mercy 
 wherever he found them hidden, even if it in- 
 volved the "dusting" of a prominent citizen's 
 best black broadcloth. If we should attempt 
 to point out of what he made fun and whom he 
 lashed, we might do injustice, and would cer- 
 tainly raise a storm that we do not care to face. 
 
i68 THE POET AMONG THE HILLS. 
 
 No; let who will solve the problem, Mr. X 
 may still represent the unknown figure, for all 
 we shall do to reveal him. 
 
 And now, to make a final quotation from the 
 great and good-hearted doctor in medicine and 
 in laws — "Good-by, old folks!" 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 THE OLD CLOCK ON THE STAIRS. 
 
 L'eternite est une pendule, dont le balancier dit et 
 redit sans cesseces deux mots seulement. dansle silence 
 destombeaux: "Toujours! jamais ! Jamais ! toujours !" 
 
 Jacques Bridaine. 
 
 Somewhat back from the village street 
 Stands the old-fashioned country seat. 
 Across its antique portico 
 Tall poplar trees their shadows throw, 
 And from its station in the hall 
 An ancient timepiece says to all,— 
 *' Forever— never ! 
 Never— forever!" 
 
 Half way up the stairs it stands, 
 And points and beckons with its hands 
 From its case of massive oak 
 Like a monk, who, under his cloak, 
 Crosses himself, and sighs, alas ! 
 With sorrowful voice to all who pass, — 
 " Forever— never ! 
 Never— forever !" 
 169 
 
I70 APPENDIX. 
 
 By day its voice is low and light; 
 But in the silent dead of night, 
 Distinct as a passing footstep's fall, 
 It echoes along the vacant hall, 
 Along the ceiling, along the floor, 
 And seems to say at each chamber door, — 
 " Forever — never ! 
 Never — forever !" 
 
 Through days of sorrow and of mirth. 
 Through days of death and days of birth, 
 Through every swift vicissitude 
 Of changeful time, unchanged it has stood, 
 And as if, like God, it all things saw, 
 It calmly repeats those words of awe, — 
 " Forever— never ! 
 Never — forever !" 
 
 In that mansion used to be 
 Free-hearted hospitality ; 
 His great fires up the chimney roared ; 
 The stranger feasted at his board ; 
 But, like the skeleton at the feast. 
 That warning timepiece never ceased, — 
 " Forever — never ! 
 Never — forever !" 
 
 There groups of merry children played. 
 There youths and maidens dreaming strayed 
 O, precious hours ! O, golden prime, 
 And affluence of love and time ! 
 Even as a miser counts his gold. 
 Those hours the ancient timepiece told, — 
 " Forever — never ! 
 Never — forever !" 
 
APPENDIX. 171 
 
 From that chamber, clothed in white. 
 The bride came forth on her wedding night ; 
 There, in that silent room below, 
 The dead lay in his shroud of snow ; 
 And in the hush that followed the prayer, 
 Was heard the old clock on the stair,— 
 " Forever — never ! 
 Never — forever !" 
 
 All are scattered now and fled, 
 Some are married, some are dead; 
 And when I ask, with throbs of pain, 
 "Ah ! when shall they all meet again?" 
 As in the daj'S long since gone by. 
 The ancient timepiece makes reply, — 
 " Forever — never ! 
 Never — forever !" 
 
 Never here, forever there, 
 Where all parting pain and care, 
 And death and time Shall disappear, — 
 Forever there, but never here ! 
 The horologe of Eternity 
 Sayeth this incessantly,— 
 
 " Forever — never ! 
 Never — forever !" 
 
 There is a popular outcry just now against 
 inserting in works intended for popular read- 
 ing phrases in foreign languages without trans- 
 lations. The outcry is absurd, as of course 
 every reader knows enough of French, German, 
 and Latin to translate for himself; but as the 
 demand seems to be in earnest we comply with 
 
172 APPENDIX. 
 
 it, SO far as it concerns the quotation at the 
 head of the poem of the old clock, which in 
 English would read: "Eternity is a clock 
 [horologe] whose pendulum says, and repeats 
 without ceasing these two words only in the 
 silence of the tombs: 'Forever! never I 
 Never! forever!'" The context in the para- 
 graph from which this quotation is taken makes 
 it much more grim, but not so well adapted to 
 the purpose of the poet. 
 
 The view of the House of the Old Clock, 
 representing it as it was at the time of Mr. 
 Longfellow's marriage, is copied from one pre- 
 sented to the Berkshire Athenaeum a few years 
 ago by his brother-in-law Nathan Appleton, and 
 inscribed with the autograph signature of 
 Henry W. Longfellow in testimony to its accu- 
 racy and his continued interest in the place. 
 
APPENDIX^ 173 
 
 A BERKSHIRE SUMMER MORNING. 
 
 ODE FOR THE BERKSHIRE JUBILEE. 
 
 By Mrs. Frances Ann Kemble. 
 
 Darkness upon the mountain and the vale. 
 The woods, the lakes, the fields, are buried deep, 
 In the still silent solemn star-watched sleep ; 
 
 No sound, no motion, and o'er hill and dale 
 A calm and lovely death seems to embrace 
 Earth's fairest realms, and Heaven 'sunfathomed space. 
 
 The forest slumbers, leaf and branch and bough. 
 High feathery crest, and lowliest grassy blade ; 
 All restless, wandering wings, are folded now, 
 
 That swept the sky, and in the sunshine play'd. 
 The lake's wild waves sleep in their rocky bowl. 
 Unbroken stillness streams from nature's soul, 
 And night's great, star-sown v/ings stretch o'er the 
 whole. 
 
 In the deep trance of the hush'd universe, 
 The dark death mystery doth man rehearse ; 
 Now, for a while, cease the swift thoughts to run 
 From task to task ; tir'd labor, overdone 
 "With lighter toil than that of brain or heart. 
 In the sweet pause of outward life takes part : 
 And hope, and fear, desire, love, joy, and sorrow, 
 Wait 'neath sleep's downy wings, the coming morrow. 
 Peace on the earth, profoundest peace in Heaven, 
 Praises the God of peace by whom 'tis given. 
 
174 APPENDIX. 
 
 But hark ! the woody depths of green 
 
 Begin to stir ; 
 Light breaths of life creep fresh between 
 
 Oak, beech, and fir: 
 Faint rustling sounds of trembling leaves 
 
 Whisper around ; 
 The world at waking slowly heaves 
 
 A sigh profound ; 
 And showers of tears, night-gathered in her eyes. 
 Fall from fair nature's face, as she doth rise. 
 
 A ripple roughens on the lake, 
 
 The silver lilies shivering wake. 
 
 The leaden waves lift themselves up, and break, 
 
 Along the laurel' d shore ; 
 And woods and waters, answering each other, make 
 
 Silence no more. 
 
 And lo ! the east turns pale ! 
 Night's dusky veil 
 
 Thinner and thinner grows. 
 Till the bright morning star. 
 
 From hill to hill afar. 
 
 His fire glance throws. 
 Gold streaks run thro' the sky: 
 Higher and yet more high 
 
 The glory streams ; 
 Flushes of rosy hue 
 Long lines of palest blue, 
 
 And amber gleams. 
 
 From the black valleys rise. 
 The silver mists, like spray, 
 Catch, and give back the ray, 
 
 With thousand dyes. 
 Light floods the Heavens, light pours upon the earth 
 In glorious light, the glorious day takes birth. 
 
APPENDIX, 175 
 
 Hail to this day ! that brings ye home, 
 
 Ye distant wanderers from the mountain land. 
 Hail to this hour ! that bids ye come 
 
 Again upon your native hills to stand. 
 Hail, hail ! From rocky peak, 
 
 And wood embowered dale, 
 A thousand loving voices speak, 
 
 Hail ' home-turn'd pilgrims, hail ! 
 Oh, welcome ! From the meadow and the hill 
 
 Glad greetings rise ; 
 From flowing river, and from bounding rill, 
 Bright level lake, and dark green wood depths still, 
 And the sharp thunder-splinter'd crag, that strikes 
 Its rocky spikes 
 Into the skies. 
 
 Greylock, cloud-girdled, from his purple throne, 
 
 A voice of welcome sends. 
 And from green sunny fields, a warbling tone 
 
 The Housatonic blends. 
 
 Welcome ye absent long, and distant far ! 
 
 Who, from the roof -tree of your childhood turn'd, 
 Have waged mid strangers life's relentless war. 
 
 While at your hearts, the ancient home-love burn'd. 
 
 Ye, that have plough'd the barren briny foam, 
 Reaping hard fortunes from the stormy sea, 
 
 The golden grain fields rippling round your home, 
 Roll their rich billows from all tempests free. 
 
 Ye, from those western, deadly blooming fields. 
 Where Pestilence in Plenty's bosom lies. 
 
 The hardy rock-soil of your mountains yields 
 Health's rosy blossoms to these purer skies. 
 
176 APPENDIX, 
 
 And ye who on the accursed southern plain. 
 Barren, not fruitful, with the sweat of slaves, 
 
 Have drawn awhile the tainted air in vain, 
 
 'Mid human forms, their spirits' living graves. 
 
 Here, fall the fetters ; by his cottage door 
 Lord of the lordliest life, each peasant stands, 
 
 Lifting to God, as did his sires of yore, 
 A heart of love and free laborious hands.* 
 
 On each bald granite brow, and forest crest. 
 
 Each stony hill path, and each lake's smooth shore, 
 
 Blessings of noble exil'd patriots rest ; f 
 Liberty's altars are they evermore. 
 
 And on this air, there lingers yet the tone, 
 Of those last sacred words to freedom given, 
 
 The mightiest utterance of that sainted one. 
 Whose spirit from these mountains soar'd to Heaven. :|: 
 
 Ye that have prosper'd. bearing lience with ye 
 
 The virtues that command prosperity ; 
 To the green threshold of your youth, ah ! come ! 
 
 And hang your trophies round your early home. 
 
 Ye that have suffer'd, and whose weary eyes 
 Have turn'd with sadness to your happier years, 
 
 Come to the fountain of sweet memories ! 
 And by its healing waters, dry your tears ! 
 
 *This stanza was omitted in the reading, as it was thought 
 not to be in strict harmony with the occasion.— ED, 
 
 t The exiled Italian patriots who were hospitably and sympa- 
 thetically received by the Sedgwick family. 
 
 4:Rev. Dr. William Ellery Channing. 
 
APPENDIX, 177 
 
 Ye that departed young, and old return, 
 Ye who led forth by hope— now hopeless come. 
 
 If still, unquenched within your hearts, doth burn 
 The sacred love and longing for your home : 
 
 Hail, hail ! Bright hill and dale 
 With joy resound ! 
 
 Join in the joyful strain ! 
 Ye have not wept in vain. 
 The parted meet again, 
 
 The lost shall yet be found ! 
 
 And may God guard thee, oh, thou lovely land! 
 
 Danger, nor evil, nigh thy borders come. 
 Green towers of freedom may thy hills still stand. 
 
 Still, be each valley, peace and virtue's home: 
 The stranger's grateful blessing rest on thee, 
 
 And firm as Heaven, be thy prosperity 
 
178 APPENDIX. 
 
 A QUAINT OLD PAPER. 
 
 After all the preceding pages were in type, 
 we received, through the courtesy of Mr. Henry 
 Talcott Mills, from Miss Electa Colt, an old 
 manuscript found among the papers of her 
 father, the late Hon. Ezekiel Root Colt, who 
 was much given to preserving such " curios" of 
 Berkshire's old times. And it is of so peculiar 
 interest that we add it here, even at this late 
 hour. We have endeavored, in our chapter 
 illustrating Dr. Holmes' poem of "The Plough- 
 man," to give the reader some idea of the quaint 
 elements of strength which rendered the old 
 Berkshire Agriculture Society a source of 
 rational pleasure to many thousands of men, 
 women and children; and of power for good in 
 the world. But this old paper makes one of its 
 early cattle-show anniversaries a delicious re- 
 ality for us; the dead past is in verity restored 
 to life. It contains, in his own penmanship, 
 the directions for this anniversary given to his 
 lieutenants by Elkanah Watson, the creator of 
 the great system of American county cattle- 
 shows. In it, we can, as it were, see his mind 
 in full operation as he was laying the founda- 
 tions of that system ; even as, when the first 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 179 
 
 cattle-show procession was passing through 
 Pittsfield streets, the spectators saw Abraham 
 Scholfield's hand-looms at work. 
 
 Half of the old paper preserved by Mr. Colt 
 is occupied by a ground-plan of the old meeting- 
 house of 1 79 1, in which the exercises were held. 
 There is a broad platform before the pulpit — 
 the deacons' seat intervening — upon which 
 places are assigned for the officers of the so- 
 ciety; those for the president, vice-president 
 and a third person — perhaps a chaplain — being- 
 designated by a drawing which is supposed to 
 represent a sofa, but which looks much more 
 like a boat with three oarsmen. The body of 
 the auditorium is arranged in five sections: the 
 pews on the west side of the broad middle aisle 
 being divided between the "male" and the 
 "female" premium-takers, and those on the 
 east side being reserved for the members of the 
 society, while the outer rows are left for 
 the "spectators." We copy the directions 
 verbatim. 
 
 "Ceremony. — The President to call off the 
 premiums, — The Vice-President to hand the 
 article to the President, — the treasurer to take 
 it from him — the person [to whom the premium 
 is awarded] to advance to the foot of the stage, 
 as his name is called: if a lady, to be met by a 
 marshal and conducted, — the treasurer to de- 
 
i8o APPENDIX. 
 
 scend the steps, meet her at the foot, and de- 
 liver to her the premium and certificate |of 
 merit] — the marshal then to conduct her to a 
 pew on the right. — If a gentleman, he is to 
 ascend the steps, and receive his premium from 
 the President; the marshal then to conduct him 
 to a west pew, designated above. — An elegant 
 band of music to be provided in the gallery, — 
 some lasses as singers to be trained to sing some 
 pastoral airs, draped in appropriate garlands 
 and flowers, as each premium is delivered to 
 the ladies. Yankee Doodle is to be struck up 
 [as each male premium-taker is called] to con- 
 tinue until he reaches the foot of the stage; and 
 then cease. A full band to play some favorite 
 short air after the premiums are delivered to 
 the men — also the women." 
 
 We see traces of Mr. Watson's Parisian train- 
 ing transferred to all this rural pomp and cir- 
 cumstance; and to those who do not take into 
 consideration its object it may seem out of 
 place on such an occasion. It would be so at 
 the present day, to which a balloon ascension 
 or a gubernatorial lion is better adapted ; but it 
 was not so in the old days, when rude pageantry 
 was loved if it was significant. Sentiment is 
 at all times a powerful motor for the public 
 mind. And there was certainly more senti- 
 ment in a silver bowl or a dozen teaspoons, 
 
APPENDIX. i8i 
 
 even if only the workmanship of the village 
 silversmith, if delivered according to the old pro- 
 gramme quoted above, and with a handsomely 
 printed certificate of merit, than there is in the 
 one, ten, or more dollars delivered as they now 
 are to meritorious premium-takers at our cattle- 
 shows. At any rate the old-time cattle-show 
 pageantries made the desired impression upon 
 the secluded community of few holidays, whose 
 only other similar spectacle in the year was the 
 procession of the judges in their robes, from the 
 tavern where they "stopped," to the court- 
 house, preceded by the high sheriff in uniform 
 and holding a naked sword before him. The im- 
 pression made by those old cattle- shows exten- 
 ded far and wide, as thousands of others were 
 modeled upon them; and their influence for 
 good is felt to-day. In this year 1895, Berk- 
 shire county is witnessing festal occasions — 
 some of them at the very moment we are writ- 
 ing these words — of far greater costliness and 
 splendor than even Elkanah Watson's sanguine 
 forecast of the county's future could have con- 
 ceived. Will they, three-quarters of a century 
 hence, be remembered, and be worthy of mem- 
 ory for their influence upon the world, as the 
 programme we have quoted recalls the old cattle- 
 show exercises of so long ago that they were 
 already a fading phantom of the past when Dr. 
 Holmes read his " Ploughman" in the same old 
 
1 82 APPENDIX, 
 
 meeting-house in which they were conducted? 
 It may be ; for 
 
 "Moves one, move all ; 
 Hark to the footfall ! 
 
 On, on forever." 
 
 PiTTSFiELD, June 6, 1895.